Interview with Begoña Lathbury
Begoña Lathbury paints contemporary equine subjects in acrylic and oil. She was born in London, UK, and has lived in the UK, the Balearic Islands, Madrid, Asturias (Spain), and Washington, DC. Currently she lives and works in Alexandria, Virginia. She studied art at the Corcoran School of Art and Design, the Washington Studio School, the Art League, and through the CVP programme.
As a young child, she drew horses obsessively. In Europe, she competed in showjumping and dressage events. She has a degree in biology and was a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. The daughter of an oil painter and grandchild of a music composer, Begoña honed her artistic eye while raising two children and working as a computer marketing manager.
In the ’80s and ’90s, she produced assemblage sculpture that addressed issues of femininity and digital voyeurism. Along the way, she rediscovered the joy of drawing and painting horses. Her current work is informed less by actual horses than by mythological steeds and the human quest for spiritual transcendence.
Historically, horses in art convey patriarchal notions of power, wealth, and property. By releasing them from these canonical fetters, my paintings offer an alternative narrative. I suspend the horse weightlessly — many of my horses float; they swim, they seem to melt, their hooves never touch the ground. Freed from harnesses, race tracks, battlefields, and royal bottoms, these horses see what we cannot: the shoreline of a new home.
The horse emerges during a process of accretion and disintegration. I frequently start a painting with the aim of pushing the limits of what paint is designed to do. I intentionally over-thin it, scattering pigment molecules. Sometimes I build up thick impasto and sand it back.
Later in the process, I often lay geometric forms (in acrylic or oil) next to areas of active brushwork or incorporate grids or stripes, creating a sense of visual separation between the subject and the viewer. My painting style allows me to explore such tensions as roughness/softness, weight/weightlessness, and emergence/submergence.
— Begoña Lathbury
At what age did you become interested in art?
My father, who worked for an architectural firm in London, started to teach me how to draw and use his lettering stencils and technical pens when I was about five years old. This was long before computer-aided design, when architectural drawings were done by hand. I was in awe of his drafting skills and, thanks to him, I am still meticulous about properly cleaning my pens and brushes. I was also a horse-obsessed little girl who drew horses on everything, all over my homework and in my books, on my desk, on walls, everywhere. When I was eleven years old and living with my parents in Menorca, the nuns at my school entered me in a sculpture competition for junior artists. The participants sat outside on long tables in the blazing midday sun. I remember the nuns waving handkerchiefs at my little sculpture of a mare and foal because the eight plasticine legs kept bending in the heat. Luckily, the legs stayed reasonably straight for the judging and, to the delight of the nuns, I won the competition. The prize was a book about stars and constellations, which I still have on my bookshelf.
What makes the horse such an inspirational subject to you?
Although I have always felt a deep connection with animals, the horses in my paintings are not intended to be close representations of literal flesh and blood beings. The more I paint animals, the less interested I am in accurately portraying their physicality. When it comes to horses, I’m much more interested in conveying the spiritual nature of Horse. I attempt to capture a sense of playfulness, peace, protection, acceptance, companionship, transcendence. The horse is the perfect embodiment of these concepts. More and more I see the horse as a spiritual ally and I hope that my art conveys these feelings, especially in these days of global pandemic and social upheaval.
My current work is more abstract, consciously incorporating the horse as one element within a balanced design. This is a direction that excites me because it approaches the idea of “equine art” from a more contemporary vantage point. Combining the horse with abstraction allows me to tap into both sides of my nature simultaneously — the spiritual/mystical side embodied by the horse and the technical, material-based side in the paint application. Painting provides endless challenges and possibilities.
How did you develop yourself over the years?
I stopped drawing and modeling figures in clay when I went to university to study Biology. Then, while I was working for a software marketing company, I started taking night and weekend sculpture classes at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. For a while I designed and created studio jewelry. But carving stone and forging silver is hard on one’s hands. I stopped making 3-D artwork and focused on raising our family. For several years I studied under Beverly Ryan, a wonderful abstract painting instructor. She encouraged me to develop my personal painting practice and to relinquish “control” over the painting process (in other words, she taught me how to “hold the reins loosely”).
What is your favorite memory involving horses?
Once upon a time I was taught an important life lesson by a circus pony. I started riding at six years old and for the following ten years I rode almost every day. My parents moved house frequently, which meant that we were never in one place long enough for me to own a horse. However, there always seemed to be an equestrian center close to wherever we lived. I became the girl to call whenever someone had a “difficult” horse, or when they didn’t have time to ride their own horses. It was perfect for me because it gave me wide experience with different breeds and temperaments. One day, when I was almost 16, I was asked to ride Corri-Corri, a retired circus pony with a history of bolting. He was charming and sweet in the stable but considered a dangerous ride by his new owners. I soon found out why. During my initial ride, he took me on a terrifying gallop toward a busy road. I realised that Corri-Corri had a highly sensitive mouth and face. He was a joy to ride, supremely agile and responsive, but only if I rode him without applying any pressure whatsoever on the reins. Within a few months, he and I won a couple of dressage events together. “Hold the reins loosely” is a motto that I still try to carry through life. None of the horses in my paintings wear saddles or bridles, or any other tack, although some of them do have human bodies.
What are your sources of inspiration, people you admire?
I think of my work in dualistic terms, with the paint as material, and the subject as spiritual. The material aspect of a painting is the part that relies on developing technique, daily studio practice, and frequent exposure to other artists and their work. For this aspect of my work I am mostly inspired by my group of artist friends and by contemporary painters who work in a non-representational style. In terms of inspiration for the subject matter, sometimes a dream will sow the seed for a painting, but more and more I am allowing the subject to emerge from the painting process itself. When it comes to subject matter, I admire artists who achieve mythic (and mystical) space, such as Kiki Smith and Peter Doig. Of the artists who sometimes use the horse as an allegorical subject, I love Susan Rothenberg, Christopher le Brun, and Patrick Loste. I also find the looseness in Elizabeth Frink’s horse drawings very moving. It seems to me that these artists have triumphed at the skill of “holding the reins loosely.”
Thank you Begoña, for taking time for this interview and giving us an insight into your colourful world!
For more on Begoña Lathbury’s work, please visit her website, or follow her on Instagram here
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Artwork used with kind permission of the artist, ©2020 Begoña Lathbury. All rights reserved. Copyright ©2020 by Joyce Ter Horst | Paard Verzameld.
