The Duel

Things have been busy over at my Thirty Horses, Thirty Days blog, so if you want to see what I've been painting, take a peek over there! We've been blessed with some beautiful spring weather of late, and I've pulled out the fly masks for the horses. For the first time this year, I put them on the yearlings. Two yearling colts, to be exact. Then I started the stopwatch. How long before they got them off?

At first I thought they were going to disappoint me - I mean, make me proud with their maturity - as they grazed quietly, unaffected. Well, Leo walked around for the first bit like he'd never worn one before, with his head stuck high in the air - not the strangest reaction I've seen to a mask, but I thought if either of the two boys had a complaint like that, it would be Spider. It's Spider's mother, Clever, who put on the funniest fly mask-related performance I've ever seen, as she cantered around with her nose up, tossing her head periodically. Clever can be a little dramatic.


It was about 11:30am, then, when the match finally took place. Leo's mask is a new one, and it's pretty secure, so it was no surprise that in their little sparring session, he got the velcro of Spider's undone. It wasn't long before he had it over Spider's ear...


The Winnah!!! Leo shows off his prize.


And then, good friend that he is, he shares with his buddy.


That didn't last too long - the mask ended up in the dust, and Spider thought it was a time to work on Leo's, without success. Darn that new Velcro!


I have another of the new masks, which I'm going to try on Spider tomorrow - see how they make out with that. Just another day on the farm....

Resurfacing

I haven't managed to do much painting these last few weeks. It's a combination of being busy with the horses and other art stuff, not to mention the income tax deadline and quarterly GST filing! Things have dried up more or less, so it's time to think about fixing some fencing and putting up some new paddocks.

When I'm not painting I'm always doing other art-related things. This is the time of year there are a number of juried shows coming up, and I'm deciding which ones I might enter, as well as what will go where. I was recently accepted into a show in Ohio at Dancing Horse Farm, and shipped the work a couple of weeks ago. Be sure to take a look at an online display of the exhibit. The three paintings that were accepted have been posted here on the blog in the past, but in light of the show, I'll post one of them again. The snow may be gone, but there are babies everywhere this time of year. This one I called "Snowbaby," a small oil pastel on panel.

There's a new project coming up that I'll be letting you in on shortly. In the meantime, I have some work in progress that is no doubt dry, so it's time to get back to it!