'The Journey' represents my artistic travel to find myself, so to speak. The horses drawn in oil pastels at the top of the cliff represent my old way of drawing and painting. I was very detail driven, used only small brushes and worked on smaller canvases. Sometimes, it seemed, I painted inch by inch so I could incorporated as much detail as possible into the artwork.

The ponies jumping off the cliff and into the water are my actual leap of faith. In this painting, I have let go of the old artist and embraced the new. It was a turning point for me. I can never be an outsider artist who was self-taught again. The six years of college that it took to achieve a Bachelor's Degree now shows in my artwork.

As the horse enters the water, they take on color and form. They are a new animal, transformed into a hybrid horse. The horses' skeletal features are featured on the outsides of their coats. The horses are eerily haunting, yet handsome and elegant. The bones are beautiful, but also demonstrate how fragile life is.

This piece is painted on hand-crafted, stretched, gessoed canvas that uses 1" x 2" pine stretcher bars as its base. It is framed with oak gallery framing.