Horse Portrait

About the Commission

This painting was commissioned by a returning client from county Limerick. She is a horse trainer and sees her horses come and go. She wanted to remember Woodenfarm Milly by having her portrait painted. I worked in acrylics as usual at a long portrait size of 30 x 60cm. The reference photos were excellent and provided me with a lot of information to use in the painting. For the background I used some simple shading to create a backdrop to the horse.
Linda, the client, described Milly to me before I started painted and that helped a lot when trying to convey that glint in her eyes. This is what she said: "She was happy, loved her food and always tried her best for you in a competition. But Milly was also a very determined lady! If asked a task in training and she was not in the mood for doing it she´d quite angrily stamp her front hoof in the ground. You could never tell Milly what to do...you´d ask...gently! But as we got to know each other better and better with time there were few things in the training that she´d object to. She was also unbelievably good with the children, almost like she was minding them whenever they were around."