The Journey of a Lifetime
Riding Wild Horses Media is a privately-held company designed to inspire big beautiful dreams. It is our goal to push the boundaries of traditional media into new and evolving realms. Nothing is off-limits. Our work is everything, everywhere, all the time. So, if you are a dreamer who believes in magic … jump in the saddle for the journey of a lifetime.
Riding Wild Horses
RIDING WILD HORSES is an artist journey that takes Lily Ross from her native Nevada into the blazing hot international art scene of the 1980s.
Giving birth to a son changes Lily on a cellular level. Never far from her own trauma, she is determined to protect her child from intergenerational pain. She wants to be the most significant abstract expressionist painter in the world, but not if it means risking his happiness. He has only one childhood, and she has only one chance at success.
When a Fulbright scholarship takes Lily and Tahoe to Finland during one of the coldest years in recorded history, they discover light, warmth, and love as silent Finns open their hearts and make them their own.
Following the head-strong, free-spirited Lily from Nevada to multiple countries is a rich exploration of relatable personal discoveries. Memorable characters like her multiracial father, gay uncle, ballet dancing judge, glamorous trans studio soulmate, and an enigmatic German Casanova help paint a fascinating portrait of an artist as a young woman.
The RIDING WILD HORSES painting was exhibited at the Helsinki Art Hall Museum in Finland.
(Oil on Canvas - 6' x 32' Installation)
Ruby Mountains
The men hunted while Lily and Jezebel headed out on their own, holding tight to the river so they could find their way back to base camp. It was late Fall; the air was crisp, cold, and clean. The high desert happily gave way to towering eleven-thousand-foot peaks. Of all the mountains in Nevada, these were the wildest and most magnificent. If you listened hard enough, you could hear the voices of the First People whistling over the top of the ashy gray-green sage.
Few were crazy enough to brave the Ruby Mountains so late in the year. It was hard to imagine how Rock convinced anyone to join him.
Mother always talked about miracles. It was a miracle Lily survived childbirth. It was a miracle she didn’t die from Bright’s Disease at age three. It was a miracle Lily was beautiful. It was a miracle Rock hadn’t killed them all with his hare-brained stunts. Everything was a miracle. Life was a miracle. Death was that certainty miracles magically circumvent, at least for a while.
The night before they broke camp, the old cowboys gathered and told their favorite stories by a roaring fire. Lily went to bed with her clothes on. Layer upon layer. She crawled into a down sleeping bag and fell into a fitful sleep. Rough voices and loud laughter boomed on the walls of the tent. It was here she had a vision, not a dream, but a full-blown crystal ball vision where she saw the future for the first time.
(Excerpt from the novel Riding Wild Horses.)
About
Linda Hahner is the founder of Riding Wild Horses Media. She is an artist, author, and Internet pioneer with more than twenty years of experience bringing new products to market. As founder of Out of the Blue Design, an agency focused on new and evolving media, she was responsible for several technology innovations, including the Literacy Center Education Network—the first online platform for early childhood education, which gave away more than three hundred million free literacy lessons to children in 200 countries. In addition, Hahner sat on the Board of Directors of the Web3D Consortium and co-founded one of the first education hashtags on Twitter. She holds a BA (Hon) in Creative Writing, a BA in Fine Art, an MFA in Painting, and a TESOL Certificate. She received a full scholarship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, a Fulbright scholarship, and a travel grant to Finland.