Artist and horsewoman Anita Rose Will’s primal passions started coming together when she was just a filly. “There weren’t enough coloring books with horses in them,” she said. Her grandfather provided her earliest drawing lessons, she said, which covered a variety of outdoor characters — deer, bears, birds — but horses always rose to the top of Will’s list.
“I’ve basically been horse crazy all my life,” she said. “They represent freedom and adventure and beauty.”
Real live horses have provided Will a lifetime of exhilarating outings, she said, but now that her health is frail and she can’t go trotting off across the landscape as hardily as she used to, horse art continues to be Will’s ride to beauty and adventure.
“I can’t move around as much as I used to, but I paint,” she said. “It’s therapeutic. It fills in a big gap. Horses have always made it possible for me to see a lot of wonderful things, and that hasn’t changed.”
If You Go
•What: Washington State Horse Expo.
• When: Noon to 9 p.m. today; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
• Special performance: Red, White & Blue Showcase, 7 p.m. Saturday; doors open at 6 p.m.
• Where: Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds, 17402 N.E. Delfel Road, Ridgefield.
• Tickets: $11; $9 for seniors and youth 7-12; 6 and younger free with adult. Showcase tickets: Additional $10.
• Learn more: wastatehorseexpo.com
Now, Will has donated a bold, energetic portrait of a patriotically maned white horse that’s practically galloping right off its canvas and into the arena at the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds, where the newest addition to the annual Washington State Horse Expo is an original equine art show. You’ll be able to admire and purchase a wide variety of horse art, as well as all sorts of other equine products and services — clothing to educational materials to farm equipment — from the many vendors on hand.
The very youngest horse lovers can become horse artists, literally, at the Horse Expo. The Kids’ Corral will welcome Pepa, a therapy horse who doesn’t mind getting extremely colorful as a living canvas for beginning painters. Also mingling with kids will be Dally and Spanky, an inseparable Jack Russell terrier and miniature horse duo, and Shelby the Trick Horse.
Magical weekend
Will’s painting will be on display throughout the weekend, and then gets raffled, for $5 a ticket, by the Volcano Ridge Mounted Archers to benefit a veterans assistance organization called America’s Warrior Project.
Amazing performers like the Volcano Ridge archers and the Blackpearl Friesian Dance Troupe are a big aspect of what makes the Horse Expo a magical weekend. Don’t miss the Saturday night Red, White & Blue Showcase, a separate performance featuring horse clinicians and entertainers as they strut their most amazing stuff.
Those clinicians and experts will also be on hand to share their equine insights and skills. Effective, humane training and building a respectful partnership between horse and rider are always main points of the educational clinics offered at the Horse Expo.
Clinicians will include trainer Brandi Lyons of No Limits Horsemanship in Arizona; dressage expert Jessica Wisdom of Emerald Valley Stables in Ridgefield; wild horse and mustang activist Madison “Mustang Maddy” Shambaugh; and nationally known animal behaviorist Jennie Fiendish.
Don’t miss Steve Rother of Rother Horsemanship in Hunters, a internationally acclaimed clinician as well as host of his own special $10,000 equine challenge. Thirty-five horse-and-rider teams have already been chosen for this test, which has two judges rating their pattern work, surmounting of random obstacles, horsemanship and communication, cadence and flow, consistency of approach and time. Half of the teams compete today and half on Saturday; the top 10 teams will advance to the finals, held at 11:30 a.m. Sunday.
The top four riders will gallop away with cash prizes.
