Tove Ottosson

As anatomical studies, as metaphors, invasive ghosts, companions and characters, horses keep haunting my drawings.

They come to me again, but now I find it’s the toy or play horse that keeps returning, and I let it. This horse sits at my place by the kitchen table and walks on my forest paths in a way the previous horses have never done. The play horse looks back at me as it goes into the woods, tired of a life of putting on a show and playing pretend. What would it be like to not have to strive towards another version of yourself, or to not feel stuck between reality and ideals? It’s an other-horse, a not-horse. Never really being quite what imagination hopes to puppeteer it into.

I draw more. I want the not-horse to roam the woods as its own beast. To stand in the meadows, sit at the table, have agency and rest. A complete creature in its own right.