Bunny Horse?

It feels like quite some time has gone by since last I wrote and I hold the weather and reading accountable for my absence. Most of last week was wet and dreary which made me want to spend my evenings on the couch with a book in hand. A friend of mine loaned me her copy of The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (the book is published as Someone Knows My Name in the USA, Australia and New Zealand), and I can barely put it down. In the novel, the protagonist Aminata Diallo recalls her life story, starting with her abduction from a happy life in West Africa when she's eleven years-old. So far I've read about Aminata crossing the Atlantic ocean in a slave-ship and her first couple of years as a slave in America. Although The Book of Negroes is a work of fiction, knowing that it's based upon the historical realities of the18th and early 19th centuries makes the novel that much more impactful. Considering it was a Canada Reads 2009 Selection, I'm late out of the gate in reading this book and I'm probably telling some people what they already know, but if you haven't read it, The Book of Negroes is worth reading.

As of the last few days the sun has come out again and so has my inclination to get some little tasks out of the way. It's amazing how much more verve a little sunshine puts into your step. That, and the news of a possible Canada Post strike--since one of my little tasks required going to the post office. Today I mailed away my applications for two different markets. One is the Grimsby Festival of Art that happens Saturday, Sept 10, 2011 and the other is the Harvest Crafts & Marketplace Fiesta at St. Paul's Church in Dundas which happens Oct 28 & 29, 2011. I'll be selling prints of my watercolour paintings at these evensts, and since both markets are still some time away, I'm thinking about also including some original oil paintings.

In other news, since I last wrote about my latest painting being a commission of a horse, I came across a veritable horse convention this past Saturday while out for a walk. My family and I went for a hike at Dundas Conservation Area and there were a lot of horses out with their riders. I guess the wet weather had made the horses pretty anxious to stretch their legs as well. Looking at these horses I photographed on Saturday, and the horse that I'm currently painting, has reminded me of how expressive horses' ears are. But I also find them kind of odd, although not in a bad way. The more I look at horse ears, the more I think of bunny rabbit ears.

I inadvertently gave the woman in the background a horse's head.