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, the Washington Studio School, and the Art League.

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. 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 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.