When I was a girl I had a quarter horse named Rusty. Because of his difficult attitude, and manipulative ways he was slated to go to the slaughter house when I bought him. I paid for him with pennies that I had collected and hand rolled. A LOT of pennies! He was a very head strong and powerful creature. He had worked long hours his whole life at a horseback riding stable with a that didn't treat the animals very well. He detested his saddle and would do ANYTHING to make it impossible to put it on. He had a habit of bloating his belly so that the saddle couldn't be cinched properly. The moment I would mount he would suck in and the saddle would slide upside down dumping me off of him. When we figured out how to over come that he took to laying down when I would put his saddle on. Every day I rode him bareback Indian style rather than continue with the battle of wits. There was nothing between him and I, just my leg muscles directing his leg muscles. One summer day we were out for a ride when he suddenly turned and bolted with me on his back. He swung around towards the direction we had just passed, the motion was so strong that I lost my hold on my reigns, I grabbed his mane in an attempt to gain control, but it was useless. For dear life I wrapped my arms and legs around his thick neck as he gained momentum. The next turn he flipped me around the front of him like a hoola hoop. As I dangled in front of him at full gallop all I could envision was falling under those powerful legs. He headed through a grass field and I felt my body whipped by low tree branches as he swung me from one side to the other. Then came to a dead stop under an apple tree. I fell to the ground dazed and in shock staring up at his legs while he happily pulled apples from the tree. What I remember about the experience was the texture of the ground and the sun glistening and defining the different browns of his hair and the muscles of his legs. I was reminded that he definitely was a magnificent creature with a strong mind of his own. We had many adventures after that, but he never bolted again, evidently he had proven his point. The memory and impression of that experience is what I've captured in this abstract. Painted in Photoshop from a composite of two photographs. Background is a texture study of crackling paint on a wall which has been transformed through several Photoshop filters. Second image painted from a photograph of horse legs rounding a curve. Digitally painted with a mixture of airbrush and using texture enhancement and "plastic wrap" filter for the definition of the color layers to represent the sun highlighting the muscles. I wanted this to have the appearance of an acrylic painted done with a pallet knife. This is my first work of this nature using digital texture and painting. It is in honor of my first art teacher, the late Helen Cunniff who was internationally known in the 70's and 80's for her textured acrylic abstracts.