Based on a true story, great artworks, and my observations. A woman was trampled by her horse when it spooked and got loose from the cart. The type of hip fracture is called an Open Book Fracture. This phrase was starting point for this series. I looked at radiographs in medical journals and made studies from those images. I photographed the helicopter taking off from Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire, where I work. I drew and painted the helicopter in motion from my photographs. The horse was especially challenging for me. I looked to the drawings of Carle Vernet in the Getty Museum collection. Finally, I was struggling with the placement of the tail in the painting He Read Me Like an Open Book. I found the perfect solution wandering the painting galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In Rosa Bonheur's painting The Horse Fair the horses tails are bound. The bound tail both solved my compositional problem and related to the idea of bookbinding. Ultimately I thought about vulnerability, storytelling, and revealing oneself like an open book. In art, I open myself to you, the viewer.
Rosa Bonheur (French, Bordeaux 1822–1899 Thomery)
Date: 1852–55
Accession Number: 87.25
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA
