LauraJS-WI

From AlexBrownRacing

1 Bio
2 Horse experience
3 FOB activities
4 FOB Network
5 My site and other sites that are useful
6 Questions from other FOBs

Bio

I am an equine artist from Kenosha, Wisconsin. My medium is graphite pencil. I currently have prints and greeting cards available of the above pencil portrait of Barbaro. 100% of proceeds of the cards and 25% of proceeds from the prints will be donated to the Fund to Fight Laminitis at New Bolton.

Prints & Greeting cards to support laminitis research

I have three children ages 15/18/20 and am employed full time at a major pharmaceutical company in Deerfield, Illinois as a Customer Master specialist. I set up and maintain all new accounts for anyone who wants to do business with our company. If you have ever been in a hospital and had an IV, or dialysis you have almost certainly had our products used on you! LOL.

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Horse experience

I can't remember a time when I wasn't absolutely mad about horses. I spent my childhood as a very frustrated girl desperately wanting a horse of my own and seeking every chance I could get to be near them. My childhood hero was Man O War. I read everything I could about him. I loved him more then anything I could imagine.

I got my first horse when I was 13 years old and from that moment on my entire life was all horses. I started out working with Quarter Horses and worked for the top trainers in the Midwest such as Mike Milkie, and Ken and Diane Eppers. In 1984 I was hired to go to Germany to work at Circle L Ranch and train quarter horses they were importing from America. The Western style of riding had just become a phenomenon in Europe and the Germans were eager to bring Americans over to teach them the "Cowboy" style of riding, showing and breeding horses.

I always had two or three jobs and while working for Mike Milkie I had a working student job for Ken and Patty McGrath. Ken McGrath at the time was a trainer for the Tempel Lippizzans in Wadsworth Illinois. He had a small dressage stable he and his wife ran on the side and I would come early in the morning, feed the horses, clean their stalls and then get a riding lesson from either Ken or Patty. Then I would drive 45 minutes to Mike Milkie Training Stable to start my day!

While in Germany I went to Landesreitschule Hoya, a dressage and jumping school owned by Reiner Klimke for a month. That was it! I was hooked!! When I returned to America I turned to the hunter/jumper and dressage world. I took on working student jobs with some very successful trainers while working at the Libertyville Saddle Shop to pay my board and eat! I worked for many stables over the years grooming, training horses, teaching riding lessons, in hunt seat, dressage, and three day eventing.

In 1986 I got married and my husband and I started our family. I wanted to be as dedicated to my children as I was to horses and found it really difficult to divide my time between them. After a few years of trying, I made the most painful decision of my life and gave up the horse world. For the first time in my life I really didn't know who I was anymore not being around horses was much more difficult then I ever imagined.

It was in 1994 after my third child was two that my artistic ability emerged. I was always reading horse books and one night while paging through an Event Grooms Handbook reminiscing my life as one I saw a photograph of a Thoroughbred called, "A Well Turned Out Eventer." I started to see patterns and tones they just popped out at me and I got the overwhelming urge to draw that horse. I took out a sketchbook and that is exactly what I did! It turned out so well I had it framed! I never thought it would happen again but a few days later I drew a portrait of Willie Shoemaker with the same results! The rest is history... 13 years later I'm an accomplished portrait artist and very busy with an art career. The best thing about it was that I could work in my studio at home during my spare time and be home with my children.

I'm still an absolutely horse crazy nut. I can't get enough of them though I am rarely around them anymore. =/

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