Artist Statement

War takes innocents of many forms. It consumes land, art, architecture, and artifacts—and, of course, the living. Children fight the wars of adults. Children die in them.

Horses are prey animals, born to flee danger, carrying life away from it. And yet we have taught them to run toward the fires of war.

This painting holds two lives of the horse, and two kinds of bonds, side by side: a young girl quietly leading her horse, and behind them, the cavalry of the Bayeux Tapestry surging toward battle. One relationship is intimate and protective; the other asks the animal to carry us into violence.

War always has a cost. This painting is a meditation on what we ask the innocent to carry—and what is lost when they carry it for us.