Eight years ago, Adonna Combs bought a gorgeous two-year old Friesian gelding as a dressage prospect. But at a schooling show early in his career, Justin made it clear that dressage was not what he had in mind for a career. “At one show we were doing a 20-meter circle and he just left the ring,” Adonna says. “He didn’t want to do that anymore.”
And boy does Justin like to paint. Adonna (she lives in Columbus, Indiana) told me how the first time she swapped the dressage whip for a paint brush laden with paint, Justin quickly understood that the brush was supposed to touch the paper. “It was amazing,” she says. “The more I’ve worked with him, the better he’s gotten. He drew lots of horse shapes, sometimes I don’t see them until somebody says there’s a giant horse in that painting. Some are very apparent and some are hidden.”
Justin does back and forth strokes, circles and zig zags in washable, non-toxic paint. If he drops the brush, he’ll wiggle his lips to blend the colors together. Sometimes he ends up covered in paint, himself. He paints Adonna’s dog and the barn, too. “We’re very messy,” she says. “We’re not the ‘stay in the lines’ kind of people.”
Justin has a creative mind – like how he lets all the other horses out and has what his owner calls “a big party in the barn aisle, emptying the buckets and messing up the blankets.”
Justin has exhibits at local galleries and events. “He always surprises me how professional he is,” his owner says.
I first interviewed Adonna and Justin for a story I wrote about Justin that appears in a book that I contributed stories to for National Geographic Kids (125 True Stories of Amazing Pets).
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Beats my stick people!! Good Job Justin.
AMAZING!!! Especially considering the horses in the paintings. Now I really need one of these for my room 😀
Worked Sarasota Jungle gardens years ago. Bird lady. One bird by chance showed his art one day when I set him down next to the resident art bird. My bird picked up the brush and wrote “Bird” in scratch. At that point my bird became the artist trainer. Hated to see him go but he has ended up in a good bird show in Miami. You never know when a artist is born.
Cute.