What this Chesapeake horseman can teach you - Virginia Horse ...

ON THE COVER
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equine artiSt
Rectortown woman has a passion for painting and horses
This painting by Gail Guirreri-Maslyk was to be raffled to benefit Blue Ridge Hospice. Photo courtesy of Gail Guirreri-Maslyk
By Deborah Rider Allen
When a back injury sidelined equestrian-horse breeder
Gail Guirreri-Maslyk, she traded her days in the saddle for
another passion — painting.
“While recovering I have been able to focus on my
artwork. So the art has taken over in the place I would
have been riding,” said
Guirreri-Maslyk, who
owns 20 Holsteiner
horses and boards
others in Rectortown in
Fauquier County.
Her horse business
is called Cloverlone.
Her artwork focuses
on paintings of horses
GUIRRERI-MASLYK
racing, hunting, jumping and playing as well as animal
portraits.
Guirreri-Maslyk’s painting was really a step back to one
of her first passions. An art major at Virginia Tech, she
first used her skills doing graphic design. “I had worked
for another horse breeder and did her national ads. But the
ads were getting boring so I started adding paint images in
them. The more I was painting to do these ads the more I
was painting to just paint,” she said.
Best part of the job: I am my own boss and each
day is different.
Worst part of the job: The inconsistency of the work
and having to get used to that.
While painting for herself, she decided she could use
it as a vehicle to stay current in the horse business. “I
decided if I ever did want to ride again I would have to
keep myself in with the horse show crowd so my name
would not disappear from the show arena,” she said.
Guirreri-Maslyk took her paintings to the Virginia
Horse Center in Lexington. She sold one the first weekend
Fall 2009
it was there to a designer who was working on two houses
in the area. “After that happened, I was really motivated,”
she said.
Guirreri-Maslyk describes her paintings as postimpressionist
fauve which is similar to the style and
technique of Matisse and Van Gogh. “Where before,
purple and yellow and blue and orange were used in the
sky, they brought red and green as light into the paintings
that did not exist in the real world,” she explains. Her
medium is oil paint.
There is no typical day at work for this equine artist. She
may start the day checking e-mails and calls before going
to the barn, or paint in the morning while drinking her
coffee. But part of each day is spent in the studio and part
is spent with her horses. And on a nice day she is usually
outside taking photos to add to the collection she uses to
create her art.
▪The Post welcomes feedback and story ideas. To contact us, e-mail Joan Hughes
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more on gaIl guIrrerI-maslyk
born: 1968 in Missouri.
residence: Rectortown in Fauquier County.
Pets: 20 horses, nine cats and various stray
cats every now and then.
occupations: Interior landscaping, graphics
design business, horse breeding, artist.
education: Art major from Virginia Tech.
Hobbies: Used to cycle and hike — now
follow the hunts and do gardening.
Horse highlight: I had my first horse
Champagne (a Holsteiner) when I went to
college at age 18. He was the only one of
his kind of stallion in the country and was
from a stallion that went to the Olympics.
He was a dream come true but as time went
on people kept offering me more and more
money for him and I sold him after a couple
of years.
Philosophy on life: Be happy every day. You
can always look to the positive side to find
something to be happy about.
best horse advice ever received: When I
had Champagne, because I did not know
how to ride this special horse, I felt guilty.
But I was told to remember that he was my
horse and I was lucky to own him. So go for
it and do not worry about the rest of the world.