For those of you who may not know this, Ocala, Florida in Marion County is known as horse country. Beautiful horse farms with rolling hills and sprawling oak trees provide the perfect place for all types of horses from high spirited race horses to prancing Paso Finos.
This past week, April 16-19, the "Festival of the Horse" was held at the Florida Horse Park in Ocala. Spectators came out to watch Dressage, Cross Country Jumping, Show Jumping, Polo Matches, and Mounted Archery Demonstrations.
The Marion County Cultural Alliance rounded up some of us artists to display our paintings during the Festival. (Rounded up is horse speak for invited) They rented and set up a huge tent, dividing the space to accomodate 12 artists. Everyone was a horse painter except me.
My Florida landscape paintings were well received...I even had sales. But, the stars of the exhibit were three of the best equine and animal artists in the state, if not the nation. Sharon Crute's powerful oil paintings of thundering race horses gathered crowds (http://www.sharoncrute.com/), Moe Hahn's paintings of the refined dressage and carriage horses captured the attention of everyone that passed by and Mary Verrandeaux's wonderful portraits of horses and dogs inspired oohhsss and aahhss (http://www.mverrandeaux.com/).
I am not what anyone would ever call a horse person but the event was fun. I was in the company of great artists and met wonderful people from all over the nation. Life doesn't get much better than that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
I was honored to have my booth across from you Jackie. I think it was outstanding to have a landscape artist of your caliber in our horsey midst. As always, you are such an inspiration and example - demonstrating to the rest of us how to work a festival. Your personality shines brightly as you clearly enjoy chatting with folks, answering their questions and making them feel comfortable. I loved, loved, loved eavesdropping!!!
Post a Comment