Of Reckoning and Renewal

Wild Horses

Before I understood what it meant to be an artist, I drew horses.

I loved them for simple reasons: the way they moved, the power in their bodies, the way their manes and tails lifted and streamed when they ran. There was something effortless in that motion — controlled and free at the same time. Drawing horses felt instinctive. I didn’t question it. I just kept returning to them.

As I grew older, making art became more complicated.

I wanted to be an artist, and I wanted approval — especially from my father. I would show him my drawings, hoping for a response that felt steady and affirming. When I was young, his comments were easy, encouraging in the way adults often speak to children. Over time, they became more measured, then more critical. As I got older and more serious about wanting art to be my life, the criticism sharpened.

The message was consistent: being an artist was impractical. Recognition came too late to matter. Talent existed on a narrow scale, and mine never quite crossed into anything that felt safe to trust. My work was okay. Then good. Sometimes even great. But never exceptional.

I never stopped wanting to be an artist. But I learned to doubt myself. I learned to be careful. I internalized those criticisms until they became my own — an inner voice that questioned whether anything I made was worth sharing.

My father passed away before I ever made art a true priority again. There was no final conversation. No resolution. No moment of approval.

Sometime after his death, my mother sent me a box of his things. Going through it, I found drawings I had made as a child — the horses. He had kept them. Quietly. Without comment.

That discovery stayed with me.

When I eventually returned to making art seriously, I didn’t start with a plan. I followed that old pull. The horses came back — not as nostalgia, and not as symbols of childhood, but as living forms in motion. The work holds tension and momentum at the same time. Forward movement without certainty. Strength without spectacle.

These pieces were built through layering, revision, and return. They resist clean resolution. They carry doubt, persistence, and a refusal to stop simply because a voice says it isn’t enough.

For a long time, the loudest critic of my work lived inside my own head. It had a familiar cadence. I knew exactly where it came from. And for a long time, I let it carry more weight than it deserved.

The horses in this collection push against that restraint. Wild horses aren’t reckless. They aren’t naive. They move with awareness — but they don’t stop because of fences someone else believes in. There’s a difference between listening and yielding. This work lives in that difference.

I don’t pretend the past loosens its grip all at once. Internalized doubt doesn’t disappear just because it’s recognized. But it does lose power when it’s questioned, when it’s no longer allowed to dictate how far you’re willing to go.

I never received the approval I once hoped for. But I’ve come to believe something quieter. That the drawings he kept mattered. That they meant something to him, even if he never said it. I like to think that if he were here now, he would see the persistence — the commitment — and understand it differently.

These horses move anyway.

They don’t wait for permission.

They don’t ask to be exceptional.

They run.