Art Sunday; Deborah Kay Butterfield

Art Sunday; Deborah Kay Butterfield

I came across this artist earlier. I wasn’t looking for art at the time I was looking for pictures of horses to draw for my horse loving daughter, and this is what I found. I love the way she fashions horses from pieces of twisted wood. The wood retains its natural form and somehow these natural pieces of wood are merged together to form the distinct shape of the horse. What she does with wood and metal is quite remarkable. Personally I prefer the twisted wood horses to the metal ones........

Deborah Kay Butterfield (born May 7, 1949) is an American contemporary sculptor. She divides her time between her ranch in Bozeman, Montana and her studio in Hawaii. She is best  known for her slightly surreal sculptures of horses which are always made from found objects, sometimes metal, and sometimes  pieces of wood.

Originally she chose to create self-portraits using images of horses. Gradually, the horses themselves became her primary theme and the self portrait element of her work became less and less evident. Butterfield earned her bachelors degree in 1971 and an M.F.A. in 1973 at the University of California, Davis, where she met her husband, artist John E. Buck. They married in 1974.

Her work has been exhibited in galleries internationally and there is growing demand for her work by private collectors. She began crafting horses out of scrap metal and cast bronze in the early 1980s. She would sculpt a piece using wood and other materials fastened together with wire, then photograph the piece from all angles so as to be able to reassemble the piece in metal. She only works in the winter, so pieces usually take 3 to 5 years.

More information here



http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa365.htm

the video at the bottom of the page is interesting, its the artist herself talking about her art. Unfortunately the interview cuts off suddenly and I'm still looking for the video that follows on.