Driftwood forms the shape for artist’s bronze horse

Susan Barnett, Margaret & Dick Scarlett Curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, said the museum recently acquired a bronze sculpture by Deborah Butterfield, an artist who spends time riding horses on her farm in Montana.

“Butterfield gained international recognition in the 1970s for her abstract sculptures of horses, which were constructed from natural materials such as mud and sticks,” Barnett said.

Barnett says the artist’s horse renderings are not what you might expect.

“Equestrian statuary traditionally featured muscular warhorses and bucking broncos as accessories to masculine action. Butterfield instead represents the poetry, the structural essence of the horse, in her sculptures of gentle mares,” she said.

Barnett says Butterfield used driftwood from the nearby Gallatin and Shoshone Rivers to model the horse sculpture, now on display at the Whitney. It was later cast in bronze.