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Otherworldy equines on display at Western Showcase

A Millarville artist and photographer who is inspired by Alberta’s horses and landscape has put her favourite muses on display this week at the Calgary Stampede’s Western Showcase.

A Millarville artist and photographer who is inspired by Alberta’s horses and landscape has put her favourite muses on display this week at the Calgary Stampede’s Western Showcase.

Diane Williams is spending her second year at the Stampede with photographs of horses that can be described as ethereal.

Williams lives on a 500-acre ranch west of Millarville with her 35 horses and works as a full-time artist and art teacher creating large-scale oil on canvas paintings of Alberta landscapes, animals – but mostly horses, her favourite subject. However, it is her photographs of exotic horses from Canada and France that were chosen by a jury for display in the BMO Centre during Stampede.

After last year’s showing at the Western Showcase, Williams said she knew she wanted to apply again.

She loves the number of people she is able to meet during the 10-day event, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

“It was one of the best shows I’ve ever done,” Williams said of last year’s Western Showcase.

She received requests for commissions and specific pieces and met people who became some of her best friends, she said.

“I like having that personal connection with people,” said Williams.

She often has to deliver her large-scale photos to people’s homes and Williams said she loves meeting them again and seeing the space where her work has found a home.

“I really love the experience of delivering each piece to people’s houses,” she said.

Her photographs of the wild horses on Sable Island in Nova Scotia and the mystical white horses from Camargue, France were chosen by the jury for the showcase.

Williams took a 10-day trip to Nova Scotia to see and be inspired by the horses of Sable Island, 300 kilometres from Halifax.

She said around 500 wild horses live on the remote sandy beaches.

The young male horses were particularly photogenic, she said.

“They are kicked out of the herd and they form their own herd and their only job is to play,” she said. “They have the most amazing way to express themselves, using their eyes, their ears, their muzzles. They are like teenage boys looking for something to do.”

The white horses of Camargue are another herd Williams was compelled to travel to see and capture in photographs. The semi-feral horses live in a wetland area in southern France.

Many of her photos capture the black and white beauty of the horses on the coastline and some are of the horses being ridden by people appointed their guardians, who care for the animals, which are closely protected.

Williams said not as many people are familiar with the horses of Camargue, but she did meet one woman last year who was married in the area and sent her a picture from her wedding reception of a white horse that was brought in to eat bread from a table for good luck.

Williams said it is making those kinds of connections that makes the Western Showcase so special to her. She also loves to see people be moved by her work, she said.

“I try to create joy and compassion and connection when I photograph them and bring them to life,” she said.

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