Faust’s Way

A painterly exercise

By Terry Conway
Photography By Joel Plotkin Pin It

December 1, 2008
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Powerful and gentle, docile yet wild, horses lay their hearts out for Shawn Faust to put on canvas.

“People admire the majesty, elegance, and physical beauty,” says Faust. “That’s foremost. But I want to go beyond that, touching the soul and getting into the horse’s head. I want people to grasp the inner feelings I have when I’m painting that horse.”

The painter came to his calling at age four. He was just tagging along when his grandfather was teaching art to an older brother.

“He broke a piece of pastel to make it small for me; boy, I was hooked,” Faust says with a big grin.

A fine arts graduate of the University of Delaware, Faust initially worked as a freelance illustrator. His natural talent was cut and polished through years of grueling drawing classes that are the foundation for his lifelike paintings. In the early 1990s, when he wanted to enhance his portrait studies in oils, Faust enrolled in a class with Daniel Greene, one of America’s foremost artists in oils and pastels.

“Daniel stressed the eyes,” says Faust. “He told us, ‘if you don’t have anyone to sit for you, go find a cow, a deer, or a horse.’ Here was my chance to get up close to horses.”

After returning home Faust slipped notes into mailboxes at nearby horse farms around Chesapeake City, Md. He received a call from Richard Golden of Northview Stallion Station, giving permission to paint some of his thoroughbreds.

His first subject was White Ice Cream. She shadowed Faust along the paddock fence, then stopped and posed. His camera clicked away.

“I was intrigued by the horse owner’s description of its very attentive, or confident eye,” Faust says. “I began to see it that day.”

Golden was bowled over with the head portrait of White Ice Cream. Then he quipped, can you put the body on a horse?

Faust did. Polish Numbers now hangs along with other Faust pieces in the Goldens’ Florida and Maryland homes.

“Shawn has always captured our horses’ expression and conformation in the same way that we view them,” Golden says. “His paintings make us feel like we are looking at our horses through our eyes and not how someone else pictures them.”

Prominent owner Stuart Janney III spotted the Polish Numbers piece and commissioned the artist to paint Coronado’s Quest.

“From there I expanded to standardbreds, quarter horses, and some that had passed away,” Faust recalls. “My business just kind of took off.”