Condensing the entirety of humankinds’ depiction of an ur
-horse in a single picture was not initially my aim but eventually became the
result of much research, cognitive leaps, intuitive thinking, coincidence and
good old dumb luck.

In the summer and early autumn of 2022, I visited many
places in the UK during the filming of Landscape Artist of the Year which
happily I won. After many years living abroad this was several months of
rediscovery of the British landscape. At every turn, such that it felt like a
recurrent good omen, I encountered white horses: in the Shropshire Hills on my
way to the first heat of the show a running herd of wild white horses emerged
from the fog … and on to the location of my interview having won the
competition; outside The White Horse in
Port Merion, these white horses were my companion.

A strong case could be made that The White Horse is the
emblem of England. There was a proposal acknowledging this some years ago for a
monumental scale sculpture by Mark Wallinger to be erected at Ebbsfleet in
Kent. And while this sculpture; an ‘angel
of the south’ was not ultimately realised the idea, drawing as it did from the
iconography of the many figures of horses carved into the chalk downs of
southern England, stuck with me such that during that summer of 2022 it became
personal.

Quite unplanned, and with much good fortune, I have been
based in Dorset since 2023 first just below Hambledon Hill and Hodd Hill (a
pair of chalk down hill forts just beyond Cranbourne Chase proper) and since
the beginning of 2024 below Bulbarrow and Rawlsbury Camp at Woolland House
(former home of Dame Elizabeth Frink).

As is my custom I walk and explore frequently on hills;
these being the best way to get far from the madding crowds. With the vague
idea of trying to record my now semi personal mythology of the white horse and
having used found and sourced materials for many years (especially charcoal
from forest fires) I picked up some pieces of white chalk…‘eureka’ and ‘of
course, how obvious’: use the white
chalk of England to depict a white horse of England what could be more
appropriate. This notion simmered away among the myriad ideas I always have
developing at various rates until late 2025. I was at an opening and chatting
to the artist Rob Adams and I happened to mention my plan for a huge painting
of vultures. He just happened to have a 10-meter roll of lined that he said he
didn’t have use for as he now painted on a smaller scale on panel and did I
want it- oh and by the way I have a huge stretcher I’m never going to use and
‘would I like them’. This simple, off-hand act of generosity from one artist to
another set me on a course which has in part lead to my new way of working
which you now see in ‘Kinship’.

For several years I had been trying to find a way to use my
drawing methods and draughtsmanship skills into my painting practice while
still making paintings in oil. Could I use the forest fire charcoal on canvas –
well, I tried, and it was both tricky and unsatisfactory and didn’t really work
as I wanted it to. I now also had the chalk and the intention of making a white
horse and that really didn’t work on canvas. The linen Rob had given me was
used in the normal way for the Tower of Silence; I stretched the oil primed
linen and set about that painting which took nearly two months to complete.

As I was nearing completion of that piece, I saw a post on
Instagram by a painter I regard very highly; Derek Guild about a painting from
the Dutch Golden Age by Paulus Potter of a white horse with dark spots entitled
‘The Piebald Horse’. This triggered a memory of seeing the cave paintings in
Peche Merle of the neck and heads of horses with dark spotted markings
(possibly the earliest depictions of horses by humankind). I knew that the horses
of Peche Merle were not Przewalski’s Horse as I had looked at depicting these
some years before since these are often thought to be the nearest breed to the
prototypical wild horse and have become the archetype of ancient horses.

Now, with chalk and charcoal in hand, the intention to
depict a white horse and the determination to synthesise my drawing and
painting practices, and with the linen to hand I began to experiment and to
dive into some research.

One can, and always will find, precedents if one looks for
them - and as I’ve mentioned elsewhere my aim is always to address both the
entirety of art and cultural history and the contemporary moment while
folding in the personal/ biographical to arrive at a unified synthesis that the
work embodies and exemplifies.

What you see before you is precisely as I describe...tbc