Racehorse turns into artist

A British horse has swapped the race course for the paint brush, with surprising success.

Metro was a successful race horse, winning around $436,000 in races at the prestigious Belmont Park.

However, he was retired by his stable after bone chips in his knees caused permanent damage.

The horse was then bought by Ron Krajewski in 2009, but in 2012 X-rays revealed his knee joints were closing up. A vet said they would lock up within two years, at which point Ron and Wendy would have to put their horse down.

“I didn’t just want to put him out to pasture and forget about him. I was thinking about how we could spend time together,” Krajewski says.

A professional artist himself, Ron wondered if he could convince Metro to hold a paintbrush. He taught him to touch his nose to the canvas for horse treats, then to hold a paint brush.

Metro was soon creating works that Krajewski judged were good enough to put on sale at a local gallery. The first four paintings sold out the week they were put on display.

Metro’s large paintings now sell for around a few hundred dollars.

Metro’s unbridled style has been compared to Jackson Pollock, a painter famous for his splatter and drip technique.

Sales of the paintings helped fund a new experimental treatment for Metro. His vet created a technique to apply a drug called Tildren directly to his knees.