After the Ride — A New Pastel of a Working Horse That Stopped Me In My Tracks

It isn't often a piece comes through the gallery and quietly rearranges the room around it, but a new pastel that arrived this week has done exactly that.

It's a portrait — a head-and-shoulders study of a working horse the artist met one autumn afternoon on a farm in the Welsh borders. Steam rises faintly from the animal's flank. His ears are forward, his eye soft, his mane still damp from the work of the day. The pastel is rendered in deep umbers, ochres and a single, surprising stripe of cobalt where the late afternoon sky catches the corner of the paper. It's the kind of thing you walk past, then stop, then come back to a few minutes later wondering why.

Pastel is a quietly demanding medium — there's no undoing it, no second chance with a wet brush — and you can feel that honesty here. Every mark is decided. The artist hasn't tried to flatter the horse; he's simply looked, and let what he saw speak. The result is full of weight and warmth, the sort of painting that earns its place on a wall not by shouting, but by inviting you back, again and again.

It's now hanging in the front room of the gallery, framed in a hand-finished oak moulding that suits it beautifully. If you're in the area, do come by and meet him — and if you'd like more photographs or details, I'm always happy to chat. He won't be with us long, I suspect.