Hemp

The stallion Orlik lives in the Yaroslavl village of Ivashkovo. Externally, the horse is like a horse: tail, two ears, four hooves. But Orlik differs from other representatives of the horse brethren in that he is an artist.

Young artist

An easel in a horse pen looks ridiculous, but in Ivashkovo no one is surprised by this. Daria Chuzhaya, the owner of Orlik, completes the “oil painting” with a folding table and a “Young Artist” set of paints brought from the hut. At this time, the young artist himself snorts loudly in the stall - he has just been driven out of a walk.

In general, they were going to put the stallion on sausage. His mother mare was “rented” from the collective farm by Yaroslavl pensioners to work on the site. But immediately after the mare foaled, a misfortune happened - the grandfather died. The widowed grandmother decided to move in with her daughter. The mare had to go back to the collective farm, but what to do with the offspring? Events developed almost like in a cartoon about Prostokvashino: “According to the receipt, there is only one red cow, we took it alone, we will hand it over alone, so as not to violate reporting.” The poor collective farm itself kicked away from the red foal, but a line of butchers and resellers lined up behind it.

“And our stallion just died,” says Daria. “We started looking for a replacement, and then some friends remembered about the grandmother and the foal.

The previous owner named the foal Orlik, in Ivashkovo they began to call him Osei - they say he is kind and calm, this name is more suitable. In May, Orlik-Osa turned two years old; if you calculate the age of a person, then he is now about 12 years old. The transition period makes itself felt - he is already starting to download his license and set his sights on mares.

The place where Orlik lives is the “Other World” courtyard. In fact, it is a museum of rural life of the 19th century, but in fact it is a horse shelter. It is home to 8 stallions and mares, which Daria and her husband Alexander saved from the knackers. Excursions often come to the Ivashkovo Museum. People came here especially often after the stallion Orlik suddenly discovered his talent as a painter.

Painting for Shirvindt

Orlik discovered his affinity for hemp painting by accident. Unlike most of his relatives, he loved to taste everything. Orlik especially liked to pick up twigs from the ground and move them through the air, as if drawing.

Here we need to digress and explain that Daria Chuzhaya is an interior artist by training. Therefore, it is not surprising that at one point, for the sake of humor, she decided to give Orlik a brush in his teeth.

“I think: let me also put an easel in front of him,” recalls Daria. - And Osya suddenly began poking the paper with his brush, and clearly hit it. I look and he’s drawing something on it.

In general, for the past year and a half, Orlik has had paints and an easel in his pen. It takes the horse painter from 5 to 15 minutes to complete one painting. If he spits out the brush or runs his nose across the canvas, the work is finished. Over the course of his entire career as an artist, Orlik-Osya painted little - only 25 paintings, five of which have already found buyers.

On one of the paintings, painted in green tones, I notice the inscription: “Osya and Misha.” Out of surprise, I ask a stupid question:

– Did Orlik sign this?
“No, of course,” Daria smiled. – This is Mikhail Shirvindt.
In the spring, the TV presenter came to Uglich to get stories for his program “I Want to Know!” with Mikhail Shirvindt” and looked into Ivashkovo. Orlik went to great lengths for the guest and worked especially carefully on the painting. Shirvindt signed it, but for some reason did not take it away. How would you not have to regret it later!

Conductors versus gymnasts

In the evening, when the heat subsided a little, Daria led the artist out of the stall. Orlik glanced sideways at me with his black eye, and then began to examine the white sheet pinned to the easel.

After a couple of minutes, having studied the sheet, he began to move his head in different directions. Daria immediately dipped the brush into red paint and inserted it into his teeth. The first strokes appeared on the sheet. Then something inexplicable: Orlik categorically refused to use green, blue and brown colors - he simply spat out the brush, but with pleasure he smeared with red and orange. After about 10 minutes, he turned his tail towards the easel.
“The canvas is ready,” Daria announced and released the artist. What kind of creativity is there if “far, far away in a meadow they are grazing…”.

Looking at the picture, painted in aggressively warm colors, we decided to call it “From Paycheck to Paycheck.” In fact, it is not customary to give titles to Orlikov’s works here. Once a tourist saw the painting “Conductors” and argued with Daria: they say they are gymnasts. Since then, the owners of the farm decided not to limit visitors’ fantasies.

Daria doesn’t think twice about the direction in which Orlik is working:
– Expressive impressionism. This work, for example, is balanced, the colors are very harmonious, there is movement. This one is good in range. And here leaf fall is generally depicted.

The future of the impressionist Orlik is vague - adolescence can change his preferences and turn him into a womanizer who has no time to hang around the easel. In addition, in a few months they will begin to accustom him to a saddle and bridle, so he will have little energy for art.

“In fact, every animal has some kind of talent,” says Daria. – And if people did not see them only as labor, then there would be many more people like Orlik.

Alexander Nevzorov, author of the neuroanatomical atlas of the horse brain:

Horses can't draw

While telling Orlik’s story, we couldn’t help but ask the opinion of Alexander Nevzorov, a man who knows everything about horses and the capabilities of their brains.

– In this case, we are talking exclusively about training. The foal first takes a stick with its teeth, scratches something with it, and the man fixes it with the help of complementary foods, then gives him a brush, smears paint on it and places a sheet, supposedly for drawing. Any horse is prone to retrieving and manipulating its own mouth - for it this is one of the main ways of communication, since it does not have paws or hands, like a person. If we are talking, for example, about whether a horse can form words and whether it is capable of displaying intelligence - yes, it can and is capable. But drawing does not belong to the area of ​​the mind, but rather to the area of ​​fine motor skills of the head. The lobes of the brain that are responsible for this are not so well developed in the horse that it is possible to obtain subtle and precise movements - without this, it cannot depict graphic symbols that would carry some kind of information. Therefore, she can simply shake her head and move the brush over the paper; this is not difficult to teach.