Equestrian artist Liz Comer Hess finds that both painting and riding demand discipline, awareness, and a willingness to let transformation unfold naturally.
For equestrian artist Liz Comer Hess, painting tuned awareness. You might call it a special kind of horse sense: What she has come to realize about riding sport horses and painting abstract expressionist portraits of horses is that her best accomplishments tend to involve a sense of transformation.
Left: Bucking Horse 1, 36 x 72 inches, oil on canvas. Right: Bucking Horse 2, 36 x 72 inches, oil on canvas.
“While it’s always really important to set an intention and have a direction in mind, there are moments where if you listen well enough, you can see what’s happening and let it be what it’s supposed to be,” she says. “I can set myself up really well with a good base painting, and I can have my palette set up nicely with the colors and the tools, but if I don’t pay attention to what goes down and analyze as I’m going and allow it to become its own thing, forcing my way through it never really ends up producing something that’s actually expressive. I think real art comes from allowing it to grow into itself. It’s the same thing in the arena with a horse. If you can listen, it will tell you what it’s ready for. It’s so rewarding to allow it to show you what it can do rather than trying to force something.”
Hess, who lives in Boise, Idaho, travels the English-style eventing circuit involving dressage, cross-country, and show jumping. She mostly paints warmbloods and sport horses, depicting the horse in movement with gestural brushstrokes.
The Spring Look, 2024. 20 x 24 inches, mixed media on birch panel.
“You can definitely see a painterly expressive dynamic in the paint, but also I do my best to keep it technically accurate,” she says.
Born and raised on a cattle ranch in southern Idaho, Hess was riding a pony by age 4. She earned a bachelor of fine arts and design at the University of Idaho and these days paints in her vaulted-ceilinged home studio. She boards Sam, her pinto gelding — who is a cross between a Thoroughbred and a Trakehner, the oldest warmblood breed in the world — at a show barn nearby and rides six days a week. Whether in riding or painting, she’s found, “It’s about discipline and practice and paying attention to small details — and having a sense of a regular practice and being aware of the things that make you better as a rider or a person or an artist or whatever you’re trying to elevate.”
Cello, 36 x 72 inches, oil on canvas.
For the 33-year-old painter, that approach all comes together in Expression, which depicts a sport horse in an extended trot. “That movement takes a lot of refined training and an elevation and looseness. That was a study of how other horses and riders do it and how I aspire to do it,” she says.
“Even when you’re riding, it’s not really about you. It’s about how you can get your horse to move.”
The Sales Horse, 2024. 20 x 30 inches, oil on birch panel.
Bucking Horse 1 is a six-foot painting that’s pure unrestrained horse, no rider. “When I was painting it, I wanted the big movement of a strong, powerful horse. There were phases when it felt like there was a lot of angst in the horse; then, as I developed it, it felt more jubilant,” says Hess, who loves painting large. “I love using my whole body and being able to paint big and use gestural strokes. It makes me feel more connected to the painting.” Likewise, Bucking Horse 2 is all about the horse at liberty, this time seen from behind.
“Sometimes you have to let the horse be a horse,” Hess says. Cello portrays a real-life bold, strong, stoic horse going over a cross-country jump. “He’s like the heavy-metal rock star out there,” Hess remarks. Colors of the Gray, with its multicolored accents, considers the complexity of an overlooked horse. “There’s a lot of grays at my barn,” she says. “The gray horses seem to be like the middle child — they’re a little bit forgotten.” The Sales Horse has perfect conformation but not a lot of emotion in its face: “It kind of reflects the experience of the sales horse. Who is it? We aren’t sure yet.”
Left: Spring Grass, 24 x 24 inches, oil on brich. Right: Colors of the Gray, 16 x 20 inches, mixed media on birch.
The horses, the paintings, her hot yoga classes, her two dogs, her recent marriage during an all-day winter snowfall — this is the fabric of Hess’ life in Boise. “I think I’m a modern interpretation of a woman of the West,” she says.
“Having grown up on a ranch and being really connected to the land and the environment, I do find the utmost importance in that ranching lifestyle. And I’ve been able to interpret that into my own lifestyle of sport horses and painting.”
Visit Liz Comer Hess online at lizcomer.com or on YouTube @lizcomer.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Liz Comer Hess.
HEADER: Expression, 2024. 20 x 24 inches, oil on birch panel.
