"I am French, of Franco-Vietnamese origins, and was born in Paris in 1996. I studied Medieval History at the Paris-Sorbonne University, my speciality being medieval horses. I then went on to do a PhD at the University of Exeter (UK) on medieval horse-training. These beautiful animals have always inspired me and I am also a keen rider.

As well as being a historian, I am a self-taught painter and photographer. I've been drawing ever since I could hold a pen: the first drawing I can actually remember doing, aged 4 year old, was of...a horse! In the last few years, I decided to take my painting more seriously by devoting more time to it. I began to take commissions and at the same time to develop a personnal body of work focusing on Dartmoor Hill Ponies.

I have been coming to Dartmoor on holiday all my life and it is like a second home to me. I love its wild landscape and its very special atmosphere. I always was fascinated by the Dartmoor Hill Ponies. These belong to farmers but they are untamed and roam freely on the moor. I remember trying to practice "horse-whispering" skills on them when I was a child! Later they became an obvious inspiration for both my paintings and my photographs: their varied and interesting colouring, their beautiful conformation and movement make wonderful subjects of these ponies, who deserve more recognition."

"When I'm on Dartmoor, I go walking a lot, armed with my camera, to find inspiration for my paintings. Sometimes I also have my sketchbook with me and draw the ponies from life. They are often very curious about what I'm doing and come to investigate, especially the foals.

Doing my Dartmoor Hill ponies paintings is often a long process. I try to think about a scene, a mood that I would like to paint and then look through my photos to find those that would correspond to what I have in mind. I use them as a reference for the landscape, the lighting, the movement of the ponies, their colours, but tend to combine them with my imagination. For my painting "A Splash Of Clouds," (which you can see here), I used four different photos taken at very different times in which none of the ponies were actually playing in the water. Once I have chosen the photos, I work on the composition and do a quick, freehand pencil sketch on the canvas. When this is done, I can apply the first layer of paint on the background. I work on each element, the background and the ponies, individually, and each has at least two layers of paint. "A Splash Of Clouds" took several days to complete, as I did not do it in one sitting.

The watercolours and the pencil drawings are much quicker to do, and though the acrylic paintings make up most of my personal work, I love doing those too: it is a very different process.

Some of my photos I do not use as references: I see them as works of art in their own right. Each time I am photographing on Dartmoor, I try to get that perfect image, with the perfect composition and the perfect lighting: a lot of work goes into it."

For the latest updates on Mai Lan's paintings and to see her works in progress, you can visit her Facebook page: MLVVQ Horse Paintings.