Meet Safiro.
Robert reached out to me to inquire if I could do a pet portrait of a horse - a subject matter I had not done to date. The horse in question, Safiro, belonged to his daughter. We debated capturing a still from a video of Safiro and using that as the basis of the portrait, but in the end, I snuck a photo from her Instagram feed that was more suitable. Robert commented, “What is the best way to capture it all? Well you are the artist."
That is always appreciated when artistic licence is given to me, and ackowledegment and trust in my creative eye granted.
One challenge in painting Safiro was his white colouring, a challenge because I intentionally include a 1" white border in all my commissions. But sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and this was one of those times. I opted to make the background a dark green / brown to offset Safiro's white coat, and I carried the colour right to the edges of the 11 x 14 paper.
Robert received the painting and loved the end result, writing, “I can hardly wait to get it to her." Travelling to Guatemala to hand-deliver the gift - as that is where Julianna lives - I then received the following message from her: “I love it! It is HIM. This is my favourite horse. You captured him perfectly!!!"
Safiro accents Julianna's gorgeous kitchen, dramatically framed in black with a thick white matt.