East Lansing Adventures

I spent three days last week at my second appearance at the Michigan Horse Council’s Stallion Expo held each spring at Michigan State University in Michigan’s capital city. My booth is not getting any bigger, but it is getting fuller. Note cards, Aquabord™ paintings, ink drawings, and of course all of my sample oil paintings. If I had a dollar for every person who came by and said the painting of the Friesian “looks just like ____” I would be a rich woman! Never mind that it’s really difficult to tell one Friesian from another in the first place.

 

Here’s the booth. The Friesian is on the right, middle row.

There were lots of boxes of cowboy boots stacked up in the booth behind me. Occasionally one would fall my way. Honest person that I am, I always returned it!

I just happened to be located right next to the Mackinac Horsemen’s Association–I was happy to show them my recently completed painting of some of their working horses. They were a pleasure to have next door, unlike some of the weird folk I occasionally get as neighbors. And they knew all about my adventures with my Willow Tree friends and the Double Dan missing trailer hitch caper from last summer. These two cuties belong to one of the ladies running the booth, and are excellent examples of the art of face painting–

Some of the best face painting I’ve ever seen. Don’t know who did it, but they certainly had a creative streak going.

Last year I happened to be outside the expo building where a four-horse hitch from Heritage Hill Farm in Albion, MI was getting ready to go. I took a bunch of photos because the light was perfect, and the resulting painting was “Attitude”. I had prints made of it because I was so darned impressed by my own good luck getting it to turn out so well. So this year the owners of the big Belgian horses found my booth and bought one of the prints. Here’s the original painting from just a few months ago.

I had so many people stopping at my booth (hopefully, stopping=future orders, at least when they spend a lot of time talking to me) that I was a bit hard pressed to get the usual number of Aquabord™ paintings completed that I usually do at these shows. I’ve found that people are more willing to stop at the booth if they see me working on something; I guess it’s curiosity about the artistic process. In any case, it works and that’s what counts. As I was saying, there were many interruptions so I got 2 1/2 paintings finished instead of the three that was my goal.

“Landing”, from a photo shot last year at the Fox River Valley Pony Club horse trials.

“Take-off”, also from the Fox River Valley show.

“Concentration”, with 1/2 of the painting still to go.