Delacroix’s Horse in the Shade of a Cactus

A group of artists, mainly painters, gathered on the town square of Prescott, AZ, to show their talent and donate the sales of their paintings to one of the local museum. The painters were from numerous Southwestern states, and they were given a picture to paint within 20 or so minutes.

One artist caught my attention. Wearing a cowboy hat and Southwestern clothing, she was about to start painting a trotting horse. I am not knowledgeable enough in the art of painting animals, but at that moment I could only think about one horse painting that has remained with me. It was “Horse Frightened by a Storm” By Eugene Delacroix that I saw at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. The atypical vulnerability of that frightened stallion has an anthropomorphic character to it – the massive body of the horse is twisted and his face is all fear. There is nothing majestic about that horse as in many other paintings. It is a frightened and disoriented animal.

So, I was eager to see how this artist will paint her horse. To my delight, between two wrist movements of her brush, she pointed her brush toward the canvas as gracefully as an orchestra conductor. As if she was asking for the lines to take shape and the horse to become form. It was a beautiful style and I tried to capture the first few minutes of her work.

Now, here is the brush used as a conductor’s baton. “Become a horse, lines!”

The next few fluid strokes – it will be a horse.

A few more brushes and the stallion is all movement!

Once the creative phase was over, I was less interested in the coloring and finishing. I had seen the birth of a majestic animal and that felt quite delightful.

As I walked around the square admiring the works of various artists, I was thinking about the parsimony in art. As a scientist I have been indoctrinated to pursue and celebrate the golden rule of science – parsimony. And, as a photographer I have learned, after many decades, that a mechanical camera with a couple of shutter speeds is enough to capture what the eye saw as beautiful, generic, unusual or purely human. The artfulness of a photograph has practically nothing to do with the sophistication of the tool used. The simplest camera is often more than enough.

Yet, the artist I watched did not have a revolutionary painting style. The few etching strokes are standard practice before “filling in” the canvas. I think it was her demeanor expressed through her wrist. The conductor of undulating lines as if musical notes. It was that subtle relationship between the artist and the emptiness of the canvas that I had experienced.

And then, I saw this artist’s corner. A freshly painted saguaro cactus under the shade of a tall tree on the city square. The artist was not there; I did not see his or her work style. However, I did stop to look at the painting.

Why? Not because of the painting, but because of the moment and setting. The artist’s dog was a striking contrast to Delacroix’s frightened horse. The dog was all calm, and content.

…Perhaps that is how we identify with creativity: either by the power of its suggestion or the touching of a raw, even if dormant, nerve.

Done with parsimony and grace.

June 18, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016