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Thursday, May 8, 2008

Bettina Drummond: The Artist as Rider
By Lynndee Kemmet

While much of the dressage world seems in conflict over the question of whether dressage is art or sport, classical trainer and rider Bettina Drummond faces no such conflict. For her, riding has always been art.

Drummond was a budding pianist at the age of seven when her mother, Phyllis Field, pulled her from her studies in Paris and sent her off to Portugal to study with the great riding master, Nuno Oliveira. For the next 20 years, Drummond was immersed in the classical system of riding, most particularly the French training method. Her childhood and early adult years were spent in the company of some of the world's leading academic equestrian of the last half of the 20th century, many now long gone, but very much alive in Drummond's memory. The knowledge she gleaned from these masters, both as a student and through eavesdropped conversations among them, have carried with her through her life and is reflected in her own riding and training.

Photo: Internationally acclaimed photographer Gerald Incandela captured a joyous moment of Bettina on the Andalusian stallion Boccanegra, owned by her sister Fiona Drummond and bred by Hamid Hill Farm.

While some might use that knowledge to gain a competitive edge, Drummond has long sought to use it to develop herself as an artist. Training has been the process by which she has carefully developed her equine artistic partners so that together, they create art. It pleases Drummond most when those watch her ride are as moved by it as they are when viewing a phenomenal piece of artwork or listening to the performance of a world-class musician. Indeed, while others might define her as a rider and trainer of horses, she defines herself as an artist. It's for that reason that Drummond has preferred to display her riding in exhibitions, often for charity causes, rather than in the show ring.

“Art is the overlap of words, sounds and feelings. The key of art is not getting lost in it,” she said. "For centuries, artists have recognized the horse as a work of art in itself. As a rider, my goal is to allow the horse to express its own artistic nature." The recognition that riding is in itself a form of art came early to Drummond and it was Oliveira who inspired that recognition. When she was 10 years old, she sat one day reading a book (A Collection of Lectures on Literature by Nabokov). As she was reading a passage where the words evoked the idea of lightness and form, she glanced up and caught sight of Oliveira on horseback silhouetted by the sun. It was at a moment when he and the horse were in perfect balance.

“What struck me was how immobile was his body and how in balance he was with the horse. The vision fit the force of the words,” Drummond said.

Born with a Love of Art and Horses