MOUNT KISCO, New York – Internal Combustion, the latest colored pencil creation of Newtown artist Leslie Hudson-Tolles, will be on display in the Spirit of the Horse exhibit opening April 20 at the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts in Mount Kisco, New York.

An opening reception and silent auction will be held Friday, April 20, from 6:30 to 9 pm, at the NWCA gallery on 272 North Bedford Road. Other artists included in the exhibit will be Fred Baldus, Janet Crawford, Sharon Curran, Ginger Dickson, Trudie Folsom, Marsha Glaziere, Dimitry Grigorovich, Rita Hadley, Holly Hugo-Vidal, C. Tanner Jenson, Louise King, Vijay Kumar, Katherine Landikusic, Leslie Lee, Genevieve Liljeberge, Donna McCullough, Patricia Powers, Jocelyn Sandor and Karen Swildens.

The gallery will be open Monday through Friday from 9 am to 7 pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 9 am to 5 pm. The exhibit – which will run through May 20 – will also feature a special tribute to Sam Savitt, a noted equine artist who passed away last December.

Ms Hudson-Tolles has come a long way since her time (1977 through 1990) as author of the K-8 art curriculum for the Sherman School system and since she won second place for her drawings at the Bethel Art League Juries Show back in 1994.

A tricycle seat transformed into a saddle and a room filled with her drawings of Trigger, Fury and Flicka were her initial attempts to inundate her suburban Amherst, New York home with horses. She sought a classical art education with majors in studio art and art education and as an artist/student she mentored in printmaking with Anna Held Audette and in colored pencil drawing with Richard Kenerson while doing post graduate work at Southern Connecticut State University.

Most recently, Ms Hudson-Tolles – who teaches art in the Ridgefield public schools – has studied painting with British equine artist Rosemary Sarah Welch.

While furthering her career as a commission portrait artist, Ms Hudson-Tolles has shown her drawings, paintings and monoprints of horses nationally. She likes the idea that she is known in Lexington, Kentucky – a horse mecca – through her art and the fact that some of her work is in the collections of the Neumann/ Woodward family, Denis Leary and John Lyons.

Her commissions (as are her honors) are many and varied – such as her mural at the Jeffrey LaCroix Animal Clinic in Wilmington, North Carolina, and her commission to benefit the American Museum of the Morgan Horse in Shelburne, Vermont. Besides the many awards she herself as earned, her students have also won awards in painting, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture over the years.

Ms Hudson-Tolles shares her home with her two daughters (Lindsay and Alyssa); her companion of 25 years, Mister Ben, a 33-year-old Morgan Horse; and a menagerie too numerous to name.