Malem Glass Art

This artist loves horses and has been sharing most of her life with them.
Her love of the environment and earth motivated her to recycle glass and give used glass a second life in various forms of horse-themed art.

Her continual studies of horse anatomy, horse kinesiology, horse biomechanics, horse behaviour joined to multiple hours spent with her own equine herd in the pasture inspire her horse art.

She is also a sculptor: sculpted glass horses at the torch (flameworking) with beautiful crystal clear borosilicate glass, pate de verre sometimes, and computer 3d Zbrush sculptures for the jewelry.
Fine art silver unique horse pendants are designed by the horse artist in 3D, moulded and replicated in silver, finished by hand with love by your favourite artist.

With a successful career in illustration and design harbouring over 30 years of experience, Malem the horse artist can draw and paint most animals, some portraits, caricature, and more. But horses are the favoured subjects of her Art paintings.
She also uses many mediums : oil painting of horses, acrylic paintings of horses, China ink paintings of horses (Sumi-e), China Pen drawings of horses and digital art of any subject.

This horse artist prefers to draw mostly from her imagination. Sometimes she uses her own horse pictures as references, but always redraw and adjust them to reflect the beauty, the feelings the magnificent equine creatures inspire her.

“Horses uplift my heart and soul,” she says, that is why the equine creatures are her favoured painting subjects.

Horses have such beauty, grace, strength, sensitivity, expressions, that this horse artist is completely uplifted anytime she is in their presence. Living with her personal herd, this happens every day. She will also sketch her horses outdoors as she spends time with them, creating inspiration for future horse paintings.

In her art, this horse artist wants to share the beauty, the grace and how horses make her feel. She makes artistic choices to enhance reality and try to render what she sees in her heart, what is beyond what the eye can see.

Painting Glass is very technical, it can be hard and you need to fire the paint or enamels she uses in a high temperature kiln.

Since she uses recycled glass, she starts by cleaning it, sometimes cutting it and/or cold working it. It is then fired in the kiln to be fire polished and mould itself to a unique textured created by the horse artist.
After this first firing of usually 24 hours (or more) the glass panels is ready to receive the first draft of a horse by the artist.
She then proceeds with detailing the horse and finish the first colour. Some horse glass paintings are only done in black, they do match any environment and can be backlit with DEL lights even coloured ones to make the horse change according to your home decor or your mood.

The horse artist now also likes to add colours to her glass horse paintings.
She is developing her own way to paint glass, sometimes inspired by the traditional stained glass painting techniques. She uses enamels, stainers and oxides for colour. Each step requires an extra high temperature kiln firing (minimum 24h in the kiln).
Patience, as the horse artist learned thought her equine friends is of utmost importance.

The technique used in her horse glass paintings originates from the European grisaille, used mostly for Church stained glass art in the Middle Ages. The horse artist’s glass paintings will last centuries, being durable, environmentally friendly and a great investment.

Her great potential and observance of details make for very detailed, expressive glass paintings. Movement is always also very present. Each horse is unique in her paintings, just like life ones.

Her sensitivity helps the horse artist to capture equine emotions, gentleness, expressions and render them in her glass horse paintings.

Malem your favourite horse artist… isn’t she by now? Has a long love story with her primary art muses the horses.
She took riding lessons and right from the start she had an innate talent for riding and understanding horses. It was not long before she started showjumping, then eventing, and riding some difficult horses. She had this special gift with the complex ones.
After a few years of learning she finally got her own horse, the first one, which she trained to jump and still share his life after 25 years. Yes, her equine partner is old now, 31 years old but still in good shape and he is cared for with great love daily. He enjoys living in the forest and pasture with the horse artist.
Some people have grass in the backyard, the horse artist owns horses! During these years more horses joined in to create her small herd. She spends time with them, trains them, play with them at liberty and care for them herself.

All this knowledge of the horse, all these countless hours spent with horses, weather it is drawing, playing, riding, relaxing, just spending time, playing music, and more constitutes the foundation of her horse art.
Malem knows the true nature of the horse, the anatomy, they way they think, the way they behave, the way they move. This is very helpful to her art and allows her to draw horses from her imagination! using no photo reference whatsoever.
The best ones are then redrawn, more studied and painted on recycled fused glass by your favourite horse artist!

Malem the artist also loves photography. She has training and delivers professional results. She covered some events and did different kings of pictures in her art and design career.
Of course, you guessed it… the photographic art she prefers is horse action shots! horse shots!
Taking pictures at showjumping, dressage or eventing events can be challenging but still nothing beats the challenge of capturing horses playing at liberty. Freezing these beautiful poses to inspire sometimes new glass paintings.

The horse artist also loves friends she meets in the forest, frogs, toads, garter snakes and insects make for happy encounters. She always poses and take time to observe, allow safe passage, not interfere as much as possible with love and respect for these fellow earthlings.

Owls, ravens, crows and other birds of the forest also have a special place in the artist’s heart.
Trees, mushrooms, ferns, wild plants, and more are also considered very important.

The horse artist studied with renowned artists for glass art, and took a lot of advice, online art classes, workshops with fellow artists in oil painting, caricature, 3D CGI art, drawing, animation and more. Studying motion, movement, anatomy, lights and shadows… there is no limit to the horse artist’s fascination for learning.
She says there is a bit of everything she studied and practised in her glass horse paintings.

The horse artist is also learning new fusing / painting techniques with art glass. Tim Carey and Narcissus Quagliata are chosen teachers for this path. A special production of fused art coloured glass panels and painted with grisaille is under production and should be eventually featured in a special online exhibition.

Malem the horse artist lives in Canada and is a recognized professional artist, member of the principal recognized associations (RAAv, CMAQ, Council of the Craft, IQ).

Malem the horse artist has received grants to pursue her art career.

Malem the horse artist also won multiple prestigious prizes.