A large challenge in the world of visual artists is record keeping. The visual record or history of what we have created over the course of a career. Sometimes the work was not “good” enough. It may have been simply an “idea” a “rough” or ???. Sometimes though no record is a bit more casual. The artist simply forgot to get the image for the portfolio file.
Such is the case with Royal Kapers. Kapers was one of Penny Murray’s wonderfully useful equines. A gentleman who had a full career, before he came to Country Mile in the late 1980s. A Thoroughbred, he had raced and played polo before moving to Country Mile for a final career teaching, hunter/jumper riders on the show circuits of the day.
Recently Penny posted Kapers’ portrait on her Facebook. I was immediately contacted by an associate. How could I have forgotten Kapers? Why wasn’t he in the files? That is going to be a question that I will ask myself for a long long time. The painting, an egg tempera work on canvas, hangs in the Country Mile office in Schomberg Ontario. Now it’s is in my portfolio file too.
Regal Kapers 1991 16” x 20” egg tempera on canvas