A Moment in Time: Capturing Memories On Canvas

By: Brittany Bevis

Janice Peterson has had a love of horses from the time she could walk. But her parents couldn’t afford to buy a horse. During high school, she and her sister leased a couple of “scrubby little horses” from a local barn and there began a lifelong love affair.

“To us, they were the most beautiful horses on the planet!” Janice says. “For $60 a month, it was like owning our own horses. I learned so much from Smokey, that little Appaloosa!”

Over the years, many wonderful horses entered, and passed through, Janice’s life. There was Tory, a dun Appaloosa who introduced her to Western Pleasure competition, but succumbed to EPM at an early age. There was Cody, a young Appaloosa who didn’t want to be a show horse and found a new career as a mountain trail horse in Nebraska. There was Dakota, a big, “unrideable” APHA gelding she bought from a woman for the price of a saddle and proved everyone wrong. There was Clinton, an APHA gelding with the personality of “a gentle Dennis the Menace,” Calypso an APHA gelding who sustained a stall injury and had to be euthanized, and now, Bruce, a blue-eyed bay Quarter Horse who introduced Janice to the wonderful world of Reining and Ranch Riding.

Like so many of us, Janice has developed relationships with many different horses, who have all brought with them unique experiences and enriched her life. Although many of them are no longer with her, she keeps their memories close. One method is through her portraits, which others in the industry are learning to love and appreciate.

“I’ve been painting for more than 30 years, most of which has been just me learning on my own,” she says. “My favorite medium is oil paint, because it’s so flexible and forgiving. It takes a long time to dry, so mistakes can either be wiped off or painted over, and it allows for beautiful blending of wet into wet. I also love the look and feel of the way the brushstrokes are still visible in the finished oil painting.”

It’s no surprise that Janice’s favorite subjects for her paintings are horses. “Horses have the most unique features: big soft eyes, flowing manes, short coats with shine that create the most interesting shapes, and they come in endless color patterns. In addition, a horse can be motionless, yet display pent-up energy at the same time. They can show gentleness and power together in one package. What more could an artist want?”

For her small business, Pet Portraits in Oil by J Peterson, she enjoys capturing special behind the scene moments that tell a story. Most often, she works from a clear, high resolution photo with good lighting.

“I look for pictures of horses in interesting poses, something that tells a story, maybe where two horses are interacting with each other. I like pictures that have interesting contrasting shadows and photos that show lots of expressiveness in the face of the horse. I work exclusively from reference photos, but I often manipulate elements of the photo to achieve a pleasing composition for a painting.”

Once she’s pleased with the initial composition, she transfers the image to a canvas and uses a very thin wash of brown paint to block in the dark, medium, and light values. She pays particular attention to the shadows and light source, because this process is crucial for rendering convincing 3-dimensional shapes.

“This becomes my map, and it absolutely has to be right before I go any further. Then, I mix all my dark colors based on the reference photo and block those darkest colors in. I repeat this process with the mid-tones and then the lighter colors. Finally, once it’s dry, I add in details, such as highlights on whiskers, noses, lips, and reflections in the eyes. I spend the most time on the eyes – they truly are the windows to the soul – they display the personality and the mood of the animal.”

Some of Janice’s favorite images, displayed within this piece, have special stories behind them.

*Avery and Nemo – “This was painted from a photo taken by the mother of this little boy, who is getting to know the new foal by the great mare, Fishnet Stockings. This foal is now a 2-year-old and doing very well in the show pen. This photo just spoke to me. It tells such a sweet story of a little boy sharing a moment with a new foal that he’s obviously in love with.”

*Fishnet Stockings – “This is the same little boy (younger) sitting aboard the mother of the foal in the last painting. This mare was their heart horse and is sadly gone now.  Originally, Grandpa had Avery on his shoulders in front of the horse, but they wanted him sitting on the horse’s back. So I did some ‘magic’ and took grandpa out of the painting, put the little boy on the back of the horse, and gave him a cowboy hat and boots.”

*The Four Horses in the Desert – “The Paint with the white mane is my beloved Calypso, who died. The blue-eyed bay is Bruce, my current horse. The other bay is Annie, a 17 hand mare my sister just bought as her Hunt Seat horse, and the roan is Jagger, my sister’s other horse, a Ranch Rider. These were all from pictures taken in mundane settings, but I decided I wanted a Horses in the Desert series, since we live in Arizona. Bruce’s background is the Superstition Mountains. Annie’s background showcases our state flower, the Saguaro cactus, and Jagger and Calypso are depicted in the Rio Verde foothills.”

*Cruiser – “This young lady’s mother snapped this masterpiece of a photo, capturing a wonderful moment in time. It’s the end of the day’s competition, when everyone is tired but happy. This horse trusts his person so much that he fell asleep with his head in her lap. The mom chose to keep all the little details that made the painting true to the moment: Cruiser’s lower lip sagging as he slumbers, his mane still braided, the hairnet and bobby pin still in the girl’s hair, and the shavings stuck to the back of her pants as she sits with her favorite show partner.”

Beyond selecting the perfect source material, Janice has the difficult task of making the image come to life through a very complex and time-intensive medium. “I use a variety of different shapes and sizes of brushes to get different effects and to handle detail work versus broad strokes. Three sizes and shapes of pallet knives are used to mix the paint and sometimes apply it directly to the canvas for a different effect. I use Liquin-a medium that helps thin the paint and make it flow onto the canvas more smoothly. My canvases are linen stretched over wooden frames and come in a variety of sizes. My oil paints are gallery quality (Winsor Newton and Gamblin) in about 25 different shades and colors. Then, there is odorless Turpinoid to clean the brushes.”

“A painting can take anywhere from two to six weeks to complete, depending on the size of the canvas, the number of subjects, the complexity of the background, and any manipulation needed to the reference photos. Oil paintings are touch-dry about a week after completion. However, the painting continues to dry from the top down, so it will be another 3-6 months before it’s completely dry.”

When Janice isn’t capturing special moments on her canvas, she and her sister can be found at most major AQHA events. “Now that I have a Quarter Horse Ranch Rider, my sister and I do all our showing together, which we love! In Arizona, we have so many opportunities to compete: the Sun Circuit and Arizona National, both at the famed West World facility, and the ‘no-bling’ weekend shows, which are always a blast. This past season, we traveled to Oklahoma for the AQHA World Show and to Las Vegas for The Celebration. Our performances were modestly successful, but these are big shows and very competitive, and I was very proud of Bruce for handling himself so well. I was able to get regular Paint papers for Bruce, because of his blue eyes and his sire being APHA, so now that both my sister and I have double registered horses, it will open up even more opportunities to show.”

Many of Janice’s portraits are memorial paintings, which allows someone to have a tangible reminder of a beloved equine that’s no longer with them. She’s currently working on a series of paintings with service animals. She already has completed paintings of a service dog for a soldier and a search and rescue dog. In the future, she plans on doing a painting with a mounted patrol/police horse as the subject. She often works with animal shelters and police and firefighter organizations by donating custom paintings to their auctions as fundraisers.

For more information about Janice’s artwork, visit Fb.me/jlpeterson6.

If you have a special story about a unique talent you’d like to share, email B.Bevis@EquineChronicle.com.