Last week I wrote about the movie WAR HORSE (linked here).

A few days later, I wrote about the incredible small world story that evolved out of that post (linked here).  To refresh, the drawing that was featured in one of the stills that I pulled from the movie trailer happened to be seen by the artist who created it who lives in the UK!

The artist, Ali Bannister, wrote to me to tell me that she had seen the blog and was surprised and pleased that HORSE AND MAN had featured her.

Wow!  What a great small world story!

But, it gets better…

RUSSIAN NESTING DOLL

You know those Russian Nesting Dolls where you open it up and there is another inside?  And then another and another…

This reminds me of that.

HEY, I KNOW THAT HORSE!

So one of you readers, while reading the post about Ali Bannister the artist, decided to go to her website.  As soon as Ali’s website opened, she saw a portrait of a horse she knew!

Just to clarify, one of you American readers went onto a UK website of an ‘unknown to her’ artist and saw her friend’s American horse!

This reader wrote to me:

It is most definitely a small world as your blog pointed out – please read on, it gets better.  I went on the artist’s site to view her portfolio. Lo and behold – right there in the horse section of pastels are two portraits of my friend’s gorgeous and truly beloved horse, Jaguar Hope, who she lost in a horrific accident. Jag truly took your breath away, he was that magnificent, Ali Bannister truly captured that.   It was such a pleasure to see that and it definitely made me smile.

But wait, it gets better…

THAT’S MY HORSE!

What the above reader didn’t realize was that Jaguar Hope was actually one of the horses featured in the still that I had pulled and inserted into the original blogpost about WAR HORSE!

Yup, one of the horse drawing images in the movie which were created by artist Ali Bannister was actually one of the images of Jaguar Hope (the horse) mentioned above.  In fact, it became the logo for the take-away gifts for the members of the crew.
Jaguar Hope’s owner saw my previous blog post and wrote to me:

Yes, I hired Ali to do a pastel of Jag soon after he passed.  It hangs in my office now with a War Horse cap that has Jag’s image on it as well.  The caps were made for the cast and crew of the movie.  Ali asked them to send me one along since it’s Jag’s image on the cap….

Ali mentioned that it was one of Jag’s portraits (she did 2) that caught the eye of Team Spielberg.  I’m sure there were other portraits that they loved too but I loved to hear that Jag was one of them.  This is the portrait I had her make and which hangs in my office:  http://www.alibannister.com/cart/jaguar-hope-p-62.php

I think Jag embodies “Thorntop”  to a certain degree.  That’s just my take…

Ali is an incredibly talented and sweet young woman.

 

In case you cannot read the subscript to the image above, the owner of Jaguar Hope is a very talented photographer named Wendy Wooley whose website is linked here.

SMALL WORLD…

I love this kind of stuff!  It is the Kevin Bacon rule of 6 degrees of separation from any one human to another.

And, it this case, the degree was only One or Two… so amazing!

I love how the Internet unites strangers – you, me, the owner, the owner’s friend, Spielberg, and the entire crew…  in exalting the image and essence of a beautiful horse.

HORSE AND MAN is a blog in growth… if you like this, please pass it around!

JULY BUCKET FUND

ITSUKO, ADMIRALTY and BHFER

Please help rehab Itsuko, a great granddaughter of Native Dancer who had 99 starts, won 100K, had several foals and then was … forgotten and starved.  And, Admiralty who was winched to a trailer.  Click here to learn more.

 

Copyright

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