Jack Balas, 2020; I STILL LOVE HORSES (#2024), India ink and watercolor on paper, 22x30 inches

  We were out from Chicago for a week, my family and me, up in the mountains in Colorado at a dude ranch. There were horses and we went for trail rides, and one day one of the hands at the stables was going to do some horse-shoeing. They used to let people watch so he had a little crowd, and hot July noon that it was, he let us know shoeing was sweaty work, and then he asked the ladies present if they would mind if he took off his shirt. No one objected, and that was the summer I turned ten, more than fifty years ago. I still love horses.