horse whispering

Monty Roberts, the American horse trainer and author, best known as the "original horse whisperer", has been around the animals all of his 73 years but has never seen one 50 metres tall. A computerised impression of Mark Wallinger's giant sculpture drew a gasp. "I'm absolutely gobsmacked," he said.
The former stunt double, who, after watching wild mustangs in Nevada as a boy, devised ways of communicating with horses that did not involve forcibly "breaking them in", is not just wowed by the scale of the proposed sculpture. "This man is a genius, there's no question about it. There's an incredible sense of balance and symmetry to the horse. I don't know if he even knows what he's done in terms of the skeletal balance and symmetry of the horse - he may well do. But often times sculptors ... simply have a mind's eye that recreates what they see as perfection. [Wallinger] has captured reality to the extreme. Often times it doesn't have to a person who really understands horses at all but they have the artistry to imprint in their minds what they see as excellence, and then to do it."
A fan also of the ancient white horses cut into chalk hillsides of the English countryside, Roberts has unsuccessfully asked for a similar one, of his own, at his California ranch. Pat, his wife, is a sculptor, with a perhaps inevitable horse specialisation. "I've tried desperately for the last 10 or 15 years to get my wife to do one on a hill that overlooks our farm. I've said to her, 'I'll provide the stones, get a horse on that hillside'."
As someone who concedes he "can't tolerate" abstract work, Roberts admires Wallinger's unadorned reality, and cannot wait to see the full- size sculpture. "I just feel like the guy and I have an eye that is similar. Not that I can make it happen. I've tried that damned thing with the clay and the clay doesn't go where I want it to go. To see it would be overwhelming. It would be a shock to the system to drive down the road and see that. I would love it, myself. It's just pretty amazing."
And what if the horse, which, to Roberts, looks like "a classic hunter", were real, and even the loftiest ladder wouldn't permit a soothing blow into the nostrils?
"I wouldn't call it frightening at all," the horse whisperer said. "Awesome, stunning - but I suppose that if you didn't know you were coming up on it, it would be a real shock to the system."