All About Horses: Catering to the Recipient

In the first few years, my aunt mostly sent me cards with paintings of horses, which actually says more about my interests than hers. Aunt Carol knew that my cousin Becky and I were fascinated with horses: we both rode horses, had been collecting Breyer horses for years, and filled sketchbooks with horses. I'm not sure, but I would guess that those sketchbooks that my cousin and I probably served as model texts for my aunt's watercolor paintings of horses.

Although Aunt Carol sent numerous paintings of horses to me early on, I think her interest and focus was actually on the landscapes that I viewed simply as backdrop to the horse figures. However, in 2002, I started regularly receiving landscapes without horses in them, and that lasted through 2005. I also know that other members of the family received mostly cards with landscapes during this time.

Eventually, in 2006 and 2007, she shifted her focus to try her hand at human portraits, including a “winking woman” (from her “youth when ladies wore hats and winking was the naughtiest thing they did”) and a slightly creepy clown. These figures were often the subject of family conversations because they were so different from the landscapes. Someone in the family must have told her that the figures weren’t her best work because she shifted mostly back to landscapes.