Bridled in Silk - Original

Oil on canvas (finger painting, palette knife, and brush)

Washes watery and ephemeral meet knife-thick ridges and cuts of pigment, caught here and there by the discipline of a brush — this canvas holds its chaos the way a party holds a room: loudly, briefly, gorgeously. Silks and feathers and flowers collide and combust around the rider, whisps of jewelry catching light that seems to come from everywhere at once. And yet at the center of all that detonation, she remains still — even the cat she holds isn't spooked by the fanfare. Her spine is straight. Her chin is lifted. She is not caught in the celebration — she is presiding over it.

In her arms, a cat of ambiguous substance — lace? Its markings look embroidered, like something stitched into being and only lately made alive, resolving into a cat only when the eye stops trying too hard.

Beneath her, a horse built like a monument: a huge, muscled neck, a white face turned calm and certain, light eyes that hold no alarm at all. He is decorated in white paper flowers as if dressed for the same party as his rider, tromping through grasses and spiderwebbed brush with the unbothered gait of something that knows exactly where it's going.

The painting owes a clear debt to Picasso's fractured planes and the loose, chromatic bravado of post-impressionism. It has the presence of something that shouldn't still exist: a masterwork, unsigned, found leaning against the wall of a shuttered Paris atelier, waiting decades to be looked at again.

Year Created: 2026

Medium: Oil on canvas

Painting Size: 60x60 inches. Canvas depth - 1-1/2 inches.