This horse is the earliest painting by Karl that I treasure. The cheap acid paper has darkened with time. The purple/maroon colors have faded. Time to archive the horse as a digital print. Taking the frame apart for the removal of the glass, I noticed that the paints were absorbed on the foam board backing so that I now the original painting plus a print of it.
Was the hand of the small child directed by something bigger than himself to paint the lines of the horse’s head given his tender age? The lines makes me think of Zen.
Update: Here is the full horse:
Birgit, speaking of Karl, what has happened to him? He seems to have completely disappeared. Please tell him we miss him. Maybe he’ll stop by for a visit?
Actually, I should say that his horse looks like a fish! Karl, what do you have to say about that? :-)
Karl is on vacation from the internet.
I also thought of a fish, but decided the horse was wearing a beret. I like the way the blue color bled down to the bottom edge of the head.
Likewise best wishes to Karl.
Birgit, had he actually seen horses by this age, or only pictures of them?
A fish? A horse wearing a beret?
This game of pattern recognition reminds me of the next painting by Karl, also done at nursery school age, that I treasure. Different viewers had different opinions on what it portrays. I see Karl standing on the boat with the sail fluttering overhead, braving the elements. June was the only one who saw the boat.
Looking at the update, the full horse, it is clear that there is something special about the execution of the head compared to the rest of the body.
I don’t remember pointing a live horse out to Karl at his early age. Perhaps, he noticed one from the window of the car as we drove from NYC to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island where his Dad worked during that time. Perhaps, his grandparents took him to a horse show?
Birgit,
Just read about your son’s art teacher in NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/greathomesanddestinations/11Away.html
D.,
Thanks for telling us about the article on Walter Bartman:
As the school children called him, Mr. Bartman, looms large in my life as Karl’s art teacher and from Interview with Walter Bartman. Having never met him, he had an abstract quality for me. Reading now about his real life concerns – houses, boats, commuting, local history of Maryland’s Eastern Shore – revealed another dimension of him.
I have been hoping for a while to take one of his workshops to learn to paint from life .
Birgit,
The horse painting is indeed a treasure. I would gladly hang it where I could see it often. I liked it better full than as a head — there’s a kind of eagerness and movement to it.
And I too would like to take a workshop with Mr. Bartman. He has a loyal following.
June,
How interesting that you feel the eagerness and movement in the picture. For years and years, I saw it serenity, immobility. It could have been the way I framed the picture with a light soft grey mat and a frame painted dark maroon/purple.
Looking at the unframed picture here on the blog, I also see the eagerness. It was a lucky mishap that I broke the frame after taking out the picture, falling over it in my eagerness to image the picture before facing too many chores before my trip to Germany.