The Best Art: Stream of Conscience and the Minimalist Philosophy of Horses
The morning after I slept in a caboose, I walked the grounds of the Donovan farm trying to capture its immense beauty in a 6" cellphone. I was literally drunk on aesthetica. (Did I coin a word there? Maybe. I do that frequently). The four souls in the cover picture above were the icing on the cake, so to speak. Especially since one is a Morgan, and I have a special fondness for that breed. This particular horse is hiding in the picture above. You can barely see just her hindquarters in the extreme left of the pic.
I had a dream of buying a particular mare who was half Appaloosa and half Morgan, Back In the Day. But she cost $400 in 1972, and I was a poor little hippie girl living in the YWCA. She might just have well have had a price tag of $4000, as financially challenged as I was.
But I love horses. I love their looks, their smell, their whinnies, their gallops and their snorts . . . but I never had one of my own. Mary Beth and John have FOUR of them. Coincidentally or not, she also has four pieces of minimalistic horse art that she has linked with each of these lovely creatures...who regarded me with curiosity, until they realized that I had not come to feed them, only to ogle.
I discovered these works of art in her bathroom and dutifully clicked their pictures. I was struck by their starkness which was juxtaposed with the profound wisdom of their captions. I knew I would refer back to them, again and again . . . and I have. Now I want to share them with you, to see if they will reveal themselves to you while they play with your mind. I bet they burrow into your souls like thorns and then salves like they did mine.
And yes, I have permission to do so from Mary Beth.
Interestingly, Mary Beth and I have similar tastes in sinks. I too have a waterfall sink, but mine is large, rectangular and burnt orange, not the cool round blue of hers. There are metaphors in those differences, but they are probably only evident to me. Such is the lot of poets: forever self-analyzing; forever seeing types and shadows of the self compared to others in inanimate objects.
Moving on...
When I was younger, my preferences and perceptions of art involved lavish color, quasi-lurid shapes, and provocative subject matter. Think Monet. Think Van Gogh. Think Dali. But there is something to be said for the process of aging. Time may filter perceptions and tastes, distilling them to their important elements (and hopefully to their quintessences), if the conditions of the soul are right. But now I find myself preferring the simple lines of contour and context. And the profundity of the understatement.
So then: what is art? Is it merely the pretty creations or replications of real or imaginary perceptions? Far greater minds than mine have tried to smooth out the wrinkles in that question, so I know better than to go there. Instead, let me suggest that you let these simple watercolor drawings of equine philosophers be like miniature mollusks in the shoreline of your minds. You will doubtlessly treasure their wisdom once they dig in. You won't even feel it.
Disclaimer: because the captioning is highly stylized, it may not be easily legible. So I am going to patiently and pedantically write out each one. They're too important to be missed.
"What is freedom?" cried the boy. "To be loved as you are," said the horse.
"What is the bravest thing you've ever said?" asked the boy. "Help," said the horse.
"What was the most beautiful experience of your life?" "Finding I wasn't alone," said the horse.
I saved the Morgan for last. She gets to deliver the Best Line of Equine Philosophy. I bet you can see why they are my favorite :
"What's your favorite discovery?", asked the boy. "That I'm enough as I am," said the horse.
Writing this post has felt like trying to weave a basket from guitar strings, horsehair, hay and watercolor. Hopefully I didn't get in the way of the art.
