"Drawn and Quartered"
........This was originally to be a study based on a saddle seen above the bar refrig at a local Longhorn Restaurant - but, as is most often the case, a mere study would not do, and it took a life of its own in a way, becoming a paen to a past which led to a future...... for one, this does not begin to match the specific saddle seen and first sketched, tho it is indeed a proper saddle..... secondly, it is marked in a science fictional/fantasy fashion, that is it shows markings of having been involved in some fierce battles, with scar markings of claws obvious..... this goes hand-in-hand with it being called a "Dragon Slayer" saddle - which could be taken as a kid's derived dreamwork, or as if the real deal...... thirdly, due to an error in handling, there is an unintended scar in the woodwork at the bottom, running thru the stirrup, necessitating an altering, tho good one, of original intents... the quartering of the background wall came as a means of balancing the work - as well as providing another level to the metaphoric theme/title, indeed, an attempt to altering the usual negative associations to the term while at the same trime keeping it as a siderial issue with the deployment in the past of the saddle usage... finally, the blanket in little ways resembles the originally6 sketched one - that proved too difficult for me to achieve without spending the time there sketching the real one, and so was woven - literally - dot by dot, and achieving a still good used blanket for the work......
