Bless Epona, who comforts suffering horses.
Horses as we know them are a human creation, much like Epona herself, so I see her as having a special kind of kinship to them compared to deities who are associated with wild animals or natural phenomena that existed before the human species. Bast and Apis are also deities of domesticated species, which is why I find them especially interesting. It’s as if the domestication process of horses, cats and oxen proved so important for ancient civilizations that the process itself was anthropomorphized as a deity.
The design of Epona as an anthro horse with grass instead of fur is an old idea I have actually painted once before (see below). Here it’s updated and more clearly defined.
The composition of the picture is based on “official” ancient depictions of the goddess, although in those she was usually seated. Apart from that this is the first painting in which I followed the composition methods outlined in the Famous Artists Course, and they proved as solid as they looked – I could never have drawn from the mind such a complex interlocking of shapes and volumes without them. My wife also helped a lot as she posed for me (holding a few large plushies to simulate the adult horses’ heads) and came up with a much more natural pose and gesture that my initial idea!
There are some technical issues, mostly due to the fact I’m not used to paint on such large canvases (this is actually my largest painting to date) and I have painted this in very non-optimal conditions (working at home while helping manage a newborn and a very high energy 4 years old kid is a bit complicated) but overall I’m happy with the result.
The older portrayal of my version of Epona was one of my very first attempts at painting. It portrayed the goddess harnessed and humiliated by fire branding in the shape of a heart, and yet defiant against her tormentor. The scenes is shown from his point of view – you can see the tip of his boot pressing on the harness at the very bottom of the painting.
