Going To Post At Great Meadow
Artist Anita Baarns was born in Fountainebleau, France, and raised in the Netherlands. In 1988, she came to the United States and entered Northern Virginia Community College, where she majored in studio fine arts.

In 1992, she was granted a United States patent for a process for creating artworks by application of crayon and ink.

Going To Post At Great Meadow is a 20″x 24″ oil on linen of a group of steeplechasers approaching the start during a meet of the Virginia Gold Cup. The late Chucky Church, a past president of the Virginia Gold Cup Association, asked Baarns to paint this painting before he died in 2001.

“He told me to change the colors of the jockeys to the colors of some of his best friends,” Baarns recalled. “Finally, I decided to paint the photograph I took so long ago. I included Chucky’s colors, his mother’s, Zohar Ben-Dov’s, the Stern’s and Randy Rouse’s colors. I love the spring time feeling and depth of the photograph; a real Gold Cup atmosphere.”

Baarns established her studio at Meadow View Farm in Round Hill, Va., where she rides dressage, hunts with the Piedmont Foxhounds and the Fairfax Hunt, and specializes in painting horses in their natural surroundings. She’s now a naturalized citizen of the United States.