Sustained Investigation #15

Artist's Statement:

The idea for this piece came form the book The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. The book is about these horses that live in the sea, and are completely wild and untameable, that people would capture and race on the beach. The idea was to have a scene of those horses on the beach, going back into the the ocean, or coming from the ocean on a wave. I wanted it to seem like the horses themselves formed part of of the wave, or were emerging from a mix of water and blood.

The reason I wanted to use leather was to establish a direct connection to the horses. all the equipment that is used to tame horses such as saddles and reins is traditionally made of leather. Leather can also be made from horse hide. I wanted to directly incorporate this animal part into the piece. I decided to also use string because in the book, one of the characters uses red string to subdue a Coppie Ushka, one of the water horses. I decided to use minimal red thread however, to show that this piece is really about the wildness of the seahorses.

I decided to cut up the leather by scoring it to show how the horses would tear up the beach during the races. I wanted to give the impression of violence, and wildness. I ended up staining the leather with gouache to give it some color, and add vibrance. It is noticeable that the sky is a different texture from the ocean, and that is because I flipped the leather and sewed it back together so that the smooth side would be the sky, and the rough side would be the sea. This is a visual oxymoron because the sky appears to actually be more violent, and the sea slightly more calm. I had to hammer holes into the leather to sew it together as well, which connects to the pounding of hooves from the horses running on the beach.