Essay / Avant-Garde

Little Pony

my little pony minty Gesture is everything in this whimsical depiction of a pony. What moment has the artist captured? The pony throws back her head and shakes her mane with such spirit that it is hard to believe her front hooves are solidly planted on the ground. It would be pressing the four-year-old artist’s gestural bravura too literally to ask if the back hooves are planted or kicking. Those are not hooves anyway, but the visual impression of the vanishingly small extremities that somehow hold up the unlikely bulk of a horse’s body. Yet it is the pony’s flowing tail that steals the scene, cascading down in a jumble of marks which alone could balance that enormous head captured in motion as it turns toward the viewer.

But perhaps it is unfair to say that gesture is everything. The bold color choices are equally remarkable. Starting with yellow paper, this artist chose two colors (only two! such discipline when confronted with an entire marker set!) from the fruit sherbet sector of the palette, and combined them in a tonal feast that makes the viewer’s teeth ache just to look at.

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