The Meadow Art Studio

It is a cold dreary day, with all of the light in half shades of grey as the maple leaves are starting to fall. I am puttering around outside for a few minutes of fresh air as I catch a brief glance at the grey standing stones in my garden. A memory comes back to me so sharp edged, with lightning fast speed, that I do not have time to prevent it landing even though in a nanosecond I know it will be gone.

My twin, Mark and I are seven years old. We have ridden our bikes down a gravel road for some miles on an adventure. The snow and puddles are mixed together with a lot of mud. We end up walking our bikes along to get through a lot of it.  It takes us several hours.  It is a beautiful Newfoundland day in the hidden spring of two season weather, only winter and summer.

We want to see the wild horses. Mark had a plan.  At that time in Newfoundland the wild horses ran free in feral herds. In late fall the loggers and farmers would release their working horses to run off with the wild herd and fend for themselves over the winter.  All the horses would return in a spring stampede each year.  It perhaps was an old practice born of poverty.  They didn’t have to feed or care for their horses over the winter.

Mark and I have gone past our three mile range. We are not supposed to be so far from home. My father unaware, hard at work as the young engineer at the mine.  If we weren’t in school, my mother, chain smoking in the house, regularly shooed us outside early each and every morning, left us sandwiches on the porch, and didn’t really want to see us again until dinner time.  Well at least not me.  Mark was her favorite. Those were some of the family rules and you simply knew better to ever question them. My parents were ‘from away.’ My father at his happiest. My mother hating every second of being in Newfoundland. Us kids essentially feral, with thick accents, despite the fact we lived in the beautiful house up high on the hill reserved for the mining superintendent. Two peas in a pod, inseparable. In the valley far below was the town of Little Bay.

We come around a narrow bend and there in the valley spread out below us is the beautiful meadow with large standing stones.  There are some forested large hills on one side, and we can see the ocean on the other. We leave our bikes on the shoulder, climb under an old fence and start walking through the marsh towards a ravine.  We feel the wild ponies before we see them. As we get closer towards the ravine, the ground trembles for a moment then goes away and trembles again.  There is an outcropping of rocks and we climb up high on them for a better view.  We sit there quietly in the sun and it is wonderful.

The ground shudders again, and then really starts to vibrate.  The horses are coming.  We can hear them now, neighing, and shrieking. The earth gets very loud, all thundering and adrenalin.  We stand up on the rocks.  There is a cloud coming out of the ravine now, rising to the sky. The earth vibrates so much now that we are both bounced off of the rocks and we land on the ground just behind them as the first horses come racing past.  They are enormous.  Some leap over the rocks and just miss our heads with their hooves.  Sparks fly seem to fly as some hooves hit the rocks. There is a farmer I can see now by the road, his mouth is open but we cannot hear him.  He is waving his hat and his arms. Mark and I are on the ground, holding hands tightly.  I can smell the earthy marsh and faint tang of sea. I look up at the sky and see only hooves, sparks and horses flying overhead like unicorns as we bounce on the ground beside the rocks.  It is such a powerful, beautiful, absolutely glorious memory.

Then the horses are suddenly gone, and the farmer is there.  He grabs both of us; hits the dirt off of us roughly with his hat as he stands us up.  We run to our bikes and start our way home.  We set off like happy pirates, unbeknownst to us the farmer will have called our father at the mine on the party line.  Everyone will know now, and half way home we see Da’s old Land Rover driving towards us.  My father is furious. I get the belt when we get home because I am ‘supposed to take care of your brother and keep him out of trouble.’  We are seven years old. I am the sensible twin and my brother is always in trouble.  Looking back it is like my parents always knew what would happen.

In the next moment I look around and I am back in my garden on Galiano. I really need to draw the horses. There is a special White Stallion that looked right at us. I get some small wooden panels and I want to convey the passage of time, so I mod-podge vintage book pages on them for a background. I draw the horses quickly with ink and charcoal. Without thinking too much about it I do six small panels. I feel such an enormous sense of relief for a moment.  While looking at them lying there finished, imperfectly perfect, a cement wave of grief will hit me so hard in the chest that I cannot get my breath. I am drowning in panic for what seems an eternity of loud heartbeats. I flail weakly trying to get to the surface. Then in slow motion I can feel myself give up, surrendering to it before landing painfully back on shore, a hot mess.

I suppose it is true that the best art always comes from a place of pain and suffering.  The viewer of the art loving it or dismissing it, all the while never actually knowing what was going on in the background or the process of the creation of it.  I will call this little series, The Wild Horses of Newfoundland and send them along to The Yellow House group show in November. I hope you like them.