Quarter Horse by Jochen A. Pfisterer

About "Quarter Horse"

by Jochen A. Pfisterer

About the artwork

An American Quarter Horse at an easy gallop in the pasture

The Quarter Horse shown here belongs to the lightweight breeding breed, the "Pleasure Horses". Light, fast riding horses, fast enough to overtake a fleeing cow in the pasture with a cowboy on their back and to compete in a quarter-mile race (quarter mile = 440 yards = 402 m) on Sundays after church. The breed is widespread in the Western States of the USA and is the ideal workhorse for cattle breeding, fast sprinting from a standing start and maximum speed after just a few metres. This makes it the ideal racehorse for competitions over the quarter mile.

Historically, horses were extinct on the American continents. It was not until the Spanish conquistadors brought horses back to America in the 16th century. Other European settlers also brought their workhorses across the Atlantic. From this mixture, North American cattle breeders bred the ideal Quarter Horse.

As a European with knowledge of Far Eastern culture, tradition and art, I have developed my own style of painting, a kind of balancing act between West and East.
An image, an idea, is captured with just a few strokes on the otherwise empty painting surface. In traditional East Asian drawings, the empty space, i.e. the empty, unpainted surface, is an important design element. This also applies to my paintings. They are intended to radiate an unobtrusive lightness. The viewer has enough space to complete the picture in his or her mind, to imagine the real original in its beauty and harmony.