Equine Artist
Rectortown woman has a passion for painting and horses

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 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. 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 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 post-impressionist 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.


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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

 

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