Image of the Day, April 9, 2012

By Donna Poulton

In celebration of Edward Muybridge's 182nd birthday, Google took Muybridge's famous stopgap photography for their logo.

Until Edward Muybridge created images of a horse galloping on the Palo Alto racetrack in 1878, the question as to whether all four legs of a horse left the ground while running had been hotly debated. Governor Leland Stanford, who was responsible in part for the transcontinental railroad and for whom Stanford University was named, paid Muybridge to set up a complicated set of cameras to record, frame-by-frame, the horse at a gallop.  The series of photographs proved once and for all that all four hooves do leave the ground when the horse is galloping. 

Edward Muybridge, “Sallie Gardner,” series at Palo Alto, California 1878.  Credit: masters-of-photography.com

Painting of the Day, December 19, 2011

By Donna Poulton

Jason Rich, C.A., Back to Pasture, c. 2011, oil, 36 x 48 in. Credit: Legacygallery.com

Having grown up on a horse farm in southern Idaho, Jason Rich understands the temperament and movement of working horses. His paintings are characterized by rich impasto and he is not afraid to use luminous color and contrasts to capture the mood of the land. His loose-edged, painterly technique allows him to depict motion and action among the animals and men that often dominate his compositions. Rich has won numerous awards and is recognized as a major emerging western artist.

Image of the Day, December 13, 2011

By Donna Poulton

“It’s more like I’m discovering the personality of the horse that I’m working on. I can’t really preconceive what it is that will work, and so it’s just trying to see as many things as you can and to incorporate them.” - Deborah Butterfield

Private collection. Credit:  My-West.com archives ©

Deborah Butterfield likes to explain her passion for horses by recounting that she was born on the 75^th year of the running of the Kentucky Derby.  In grade school she remembers sketching horses and when she went to college at the University of California at Davis, her sustained interest in images of horses continued, even in her conceptual classes. Using found objects and driftwood, she creates large-scale abstract sculptures. In a more complicated series of steps, the model is then cast in bronze. Butterfield’s work is in over 50 museums, including the Whitney and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is found in numerous private collections.  She lives and works in Bozeman, Montana.

Private collection. Credit:  My-West.com archives ©