gillian higgins horse anatomy paintings

Why Gillian Higgins Paints all Over Horses

She doesn’t show her artwork in galleries. She probably won’t sit around chatting composition and color theory with you. But she makes some of the most wonderful art I’ve ever seen.

Gillian Higgins is an equine anatomy expert, coach and therapist, and she also paints all over horses.

Affiliate links may be used on this post. This means: I may earn a small commission if you purchase something through one of my links.

Gillian Higgins with a horse painted with skeleton

In order to see what’s going on inside the horse, and help facilitate her ideas, Gillian paints some of the bones, muscles, and tendons on the outside of the horse.

The result is one amazing-looking horse that acts as an active model to aid in Gillan’s teachings.

I stumbled across her a few years back, and was mind-blown by how striking these horses looked with the equivalent of a picture window to their innards.

Horses Inside out - painted horse to teach anatomy

The intersection of art, anatomy, and giant animal is a beautiful place, and I was transported back to freshman year figure drawing classes.

The best way to truly understand the human body and how it works (in order to draw it), is to draw a bunch of naked bodies.

This gives you a solid idea of how muscles/bones/fat/skin all work together in movement, space, reflection of light, etc.

Take that one step further and spend time drawing human skeletons, and you get a pretty good understanding of the human form.

So while I’m sure I’m not the only one who gasped upon first seeing Gillian’s painted horses, I know that this concept is especially inspiring to artists.

I love how in the photo above she also took this idea to the human form! See the horses in action here:

If you want to try your hand at horse-sculpting, Gillian has teamed up with artist Judy Boyt to teach workshops in Leicestershire, England. This looks fuuuuuun!

Explore more of what Gillian does on her website, and here is her YouTube channel.

Thanks for sharing! 😍

Similar Posts