The Fire Horse by Hannah Sterry is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Feel free to print this and use it for cards, wall pictures and general personal use! If you really like it and want to show your appreciation you can make me incredibly happy by sending a little donation via PayPal or sharing this post on facebook and twitter. Either of these things makes me happier than anyone could think possible and will make me smile crazily (you can demand photos if you don’t believe me)!
This is an illustration I did for fun a few years ago. At the time I was at a certain well-known university studying Mathematics and battling with depression and it was just nice to create something again. Usually I’d use music to combat depression, but I discovered that playing music in halls of residence gets you hated pretty quickly by the hall wardens and there were only 8 practice rooms on campus between over 20,000 students so there were never any free (no wonder the waiting list for counselling there was about 3 months long). One of the guys in my halls resorted to practicing his saxophone in a field, because he was threatened by the hall warden for playing in his room. I’m glad that I left.
NOTE: There might be a depression post coming up soon, because I’ve recovered enough to feel strong enough to speak about it and because I think it’s good to tell people about these things for solidarity and to reduce stigma (because stigma against an illness that affects over 25% of the population at one point or another is ridiculous).
Hannah Sterry 
That horse is beautiful Hannah. But what a bleak picture you paint of your university days. I didn’t ‘live in’. I lived in student ‘digs’ off campus and those are some of my happiest memories of my university days.
Thank you! I didn’t get on with that particular university at all and left on the recommendation of my doctor (she was very worried about me), so I came back to Devon, took some time to recover, got a part-time job and continued my studies with the Open University. Life is so much better now and it’s lovely being near friends and family – I like it here! 🙂
If your work is anything to go by your creativity is thriving now so it must be good for you.
Hannah, this is so beautiful, simple and colorful in many meanings of the word. Myself, having an affinity for horses , as you might can tell from my photos, this piece of art speaks strongly to me.
Thank you! I just headed back over to your blog after realising I’d not seen any of your posts in my feed for a while. Your photos are wonderful – they’re making me want to just grab a camera and explore the world! 🙂
Hannah, thank you much for visiting and this wonderful comment.. I know, reader somehow also miss out on posts in my neck of the hood… Looking at your blog, you are definitely exploring the world in many various ways already! 🙂
Wonderful illustration!
I’m glad you left too. It sounds like a frustrating place. Good picture, by the way.