Day 30. High Horse, Good Grip: When Creativity Gives Us the Courage to Ride

On day 20, I painted a “high horse,” and the image hasn’t left me since. At first, I thought the painting would be about getting off the horse, as the expression goes. But as I worked, it took a different direction. The figure wasn’t haughty at all. She was radiant. So was the horse.

Then one of the poets in our 31 in 31 group, Nita Chase (please go check her out), wrote a poem inspired by that piece called “I’m on Denise’s High Horse.” I just about wept. She got it. Her words added a whole new layer of meaning to the painting.

although he has
legs like mountains
I’ve got a good grip
I’m not afraid of falling

I think the reason I lead this group every year is to show people that making things does put you on a high horse—but not in the way we’re taught to fear. It’s a horse you can handle because you’ve got a good grip. Creativity is your birthright. It’s baked into your bones. Your ancestors made beautiful, imperfect things.

For the past three years, I’ve turned my day 31 painting into the grande finale: a large-scale piece I work on bit by bit, finishing it on the last day. This year, that painting is a 48 x 36-inch horse and rider. Cold weather pushed me into the back of the gallery, working with acrylics on a large surface—something I haven’t done since my twenties.

While I’m learning to make peace with acrylics as a medium, I still struggle with the waste they create. I’m used to oil paint, where I can be generous on the palette and return to it days—or even weeks—later. With acrylic, whatever I don’t use in a single session dries up and has to be thrown away.

My remedy has been to apply leftover paint at the end of each session to a fresh canvas, creating a base layer for something that will come later.

Today’s painting was built on that leftover paint. I took a red oil pastel and made loose, gestural drawings of my high horses—very much inspired by another 31 in 31 artist, Sandra Epton (again, please check her out). From there, I pulled out the forms not by filling in the horses themselves, but by painting the spaces around them.

The result is an abstraction I’m really proud of. It’s looser than the day 31 piece, even though it was born from its remnants. The 31 in 31 practice is usually about discovery, and while there have been many small discoveries this month, this one felt like the greatest: building a painting in a way I hadn’t before, trying something new, and falling in love with the process.

There are days when the small daily paintings feel monotonous, when the question “Why am I even doing this?” creeps in. But we ride on. We ride on because we know there’s something worth it at the end. We ride on because it’s okay to be on our high horses.

We’ve got a good grip.