These paintings of horses and riders spring from my direct experience as a dressage rider. The goal of dressage is a kind of equine ballet, with horse and rider in a physical and mental balance which allows for movements of great expressiveness and precision - qualities shared, I believe, by all fine art. The riding arena is a place where these training goals of harmony are constantly practiced, but it is also a place where the physical character of riding - the sheer mass of the animals, their speed and power, the instinctive responses which propel them - carries a certain unavoidable danger.

My painterly response to this world involves particular interest in issues of scale and distance, the suddeness and surprise which speed makes explicit, the conversation between surface and light, and above all the aliveness and beauty of this very specific realm.