NEW CANAAN – The New Canaan Society for the Arts and the Betty Barker Gallery will be featuring an Equestrian Exhibition through Sunday, November 4, and Newtown’s Leslie Hudson-Tolles will be one five artists on display.

The exhibition will be shown at the Carriage Barn Arts Center at Waveny Park in New Canaan (off Exit 37 on the Merritt Parkway). An opening reception will be held on Sunday, October 14, from 4 to 6 pm. The gallery will be open from 11 am to 4 pm, Tuesday through Friday, and from 1 to 5 pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Ms Hudson-Tolles has been featured in many, many exhibitions across the region.

She began creating horses with pen and paper, paint and canvas, more than 30 years ago as a kid growing up in suburban Buffalo, New York. A long journey through art schools and several states has brought her to this point.

“I chose Newtown years ago because of the horse population, the open space (for riding), and the superior schools,” said Ms Hudson-Tolles, an art teacher in the Ridgefield Public School system and one of this year’s recipients of the Connecticut Alliance for Arts Education Distinguished Educators Award.

“It has always been my goal to create good art,” she said, “and artwork that has value as a painting or drawing BEYOND its subject matter. Balance, intriguing composition, interest, a unique point of view.”

Horses are not her only subject matter. Since she is especially adept and bringing to life pictures and paintings of horses and their riders, her commissioned portraiture is in demand. Printmaking, drawing, pastels, and paintings is all part of the process.

Ms Hudson-Tolles has spent the last two summers working with the American Academy of Equine Artists in Kentucky and that has helped her realize she is different because she embraces so many mediums.

“I have a leg up,” she said. “I have a classical art foundation and I teach art. Through my teaching I am constantly reminded to reach out and try something new, to grow, to push myself. And then there are the horses, my models. By riding and grooming and caring for my horses, I am privy to intimate daily deminders of the structure, form, psyche and movement of the horse and how they interact with each other and their humans.”

The New Canaan show is a milestone for Ms Hudson-Tolles, whose equine art is often shown nationally, because “this is all recent work,” she said, “work that I created for myself. These are ponies, my horses, dressage horses, a Shire, horses running free, kids and horses at shows, horses I painted in Kentucky . . . horses with attitude. All that spoke to me, some quietly, softly or with that look-at-me beauty of the free running horse.”

With the work of artists Jocelyn Sandor, Kendall Klingbeil, Alecia Underhill and Doug Leigh joining hers, the New Canaan show promises to deliver a visual feast to lovers of art and horses.

“The Waveny’s Carriage Barn is the perfect site for an equestrian show,” said Ms Hudson-Tolles.