Artist's comments: “Pastel of mare 'Hannie' as seen at the UK Friesian National Grading Inspections and part of my 'Black Horse' series of paintings. I wanted to depict the movement - of her mane and the light across her skin so kept the marks expressive and fluid, and the detail just implied rather than stated.
Although the piece is created on dark graphite pastel paper, the background is also worked in black pastel which is the only black in the picture - the other blacks are all made from a mixture of other colours.  I have alluded to this by bringing the shading into just pastel marks at the bottom of the image and letting the colours used to mix just sit in their unmixed form.”