All things equestrian fill the bright, gorgeous Francine Kelly Gallery at Featherstone Center for the Arts through Oct. 6. Featherstone’s magnificent campus actually began as the Bannerman Horse farm. Executive director Ann Smith says, “Then Bill and Mary Stevens purchased it and changed it to Featherstone Farm based on a horse named Featherstone.” She notes, too, how many people grew up riding on the property and the other horse farms on the Island. “Horses seem to be in the forefront,” says Smith. “So, we thought it would be a really fun fall show.”
And a fun show it is. Works by Tony Smalls, Annie Parsons’ mini horse, who paints remarkably cohesive abstract canvases, sit just outside the gallery entrance. Walking inside, there are a plethora of horses in all shapes and sizes standing and gallivanting in landscapes and nestling in barns. They run the gamut of media, size, and style.
Susan Cole’s delightful collage on wood, “Run for the Roses,” features a fine equestrian specimen with a gleaming brown coat, standing majestically, meeting our gaze. The garlanded reins are echoed in the colorful blooms and other vegetation that runs up and down the lively abstract composition.
Nearby is Sarah Moore’s “Horse Sketches,” which are just that — spare ink drawings that capture the equine character of the animal in all sorts of poses with just a few marks.
On the other hand, Adrian Smith’s masterful mark-making in “Freedom” is immensely complex. He chiseled hundreds upon hundreds of tiny cuts into the slate slab to create a physical and visual texture to the horse’s coat.
Elizabeth Convery-Luce prints her large black-and-white photograph “My Muse” on silver, which makes the lighter areas shimmer as though illuminated from within. The effect accentuates the thousands of lines created by the hair in the thick mane cascading down the horse’s neck. The massive mane extends over the creature’s head, hiding its eyes from view and cloaking it in mystery.
“King of the Hill,” by Bob Avakian, is a stunning monotone photograph in his signature style. A lone horse is silhouetted against an enormous expanse of a moodily lit, cloud-filled sky. Although standing still, with its head bent, tail swishing, the horse exudes a majesty that, indeed, makes it “king of the hill.”
In contrast, Michael Stimola comes in extremely close in “Duet for Keith, West Tisbury.” The archival pigment print captures every shade of white on the elongated heads of the two horses. Stimola puts us within a hair’s breadth of the front horse so that its nose juts into our space, drawing us immediately into the photograph. The horse behind, head lowered, seems to nestle against the first, emanating a tender intimacy between the two.
A rearing horse on the carousel with others in the background fills Jennifer Smith Turner’s 16 x 24 inch color photograph “Flying Horses.” In a single shot, she captures the nostalgia of this, the oldest continuously operating merry-go-round in the United States.
Melissa Patterson’s intensely tender photograph “Angie and Aly” catches your breath. She places us at the edge of a precipice of a grave, looking down at her daughter, whose head is gently lying on her deceased horse, which is movingly garlanded with flowers.
At the other end of the emotional spectrum is Omar Rayyan’s wildly exuberant Don Quixote, who, with a wide-eyed gaze, is tilting off his mighty steed in an oil painting of the same title. The horse gallops toward us, legs splayed, possessed with the same crazed look as his rider.
Christine Decker Marquis’s spunky horse in “Good Morning, Daisy” peeks out at us from the slats of a funkily colored barn. Daisy’s lightning bolt marking down the length of her head echoes the pizazz of Marquis’s pigments.
Matt Cosby’s sizable black-and-white photo of a cowboy roping steer is full of life. He leaves a space in the center, inviting us into the excitement of the Wild West.
L.A. Brown’s “Lucky Barn” is quiet by comparison. Her white wood frame locks the image into place with a solitary leafless tree in front of the gray-shingled barn. Over the door is an upside-down horseshoe — a symbol of good luck.
Allen Whiting’s “Sporty” is a large oil on linen rendered in his characteristic loose style, alluding to his subject matter. He renders the landscape — sky, trees, and field — in cool colors. The even strokes of pigment throughout the canvas create a sense of quietude, locking the still brown horse in place.
Some three-dimensional works include Washington Ledesma’s wry “Two Sisters,” in which dual bright orange heads against a checkered background stare up at us inside his ceramic bowl. A cream-colored horse gallops across the front of Sheila Rayyan’s blue enameled clay tea box. Amy Custis renders her circular “Horse Head Panel” in stained glass, expertly altering each panel’s texture and opacity to delineate the composition.
Dave Brown creates his abstract sculpture, “Pegasus,” from wood. The overlapping leaf-like forms swirl up and out, evoking the sense of the mythical beast rather than depicting it realistically.
Walking out of the gallery, we see Richard Skidmore’s arresting “Spirit Horse” hanging over the desk. It is the perfect ending to an exhibit about these magnificent creatures.
In this archival print, a white horse emerges from an indistinct brown one in a dreamy landscape. Coming straight toward us, the white equine bridges the divide between the physical and spiritual realms.
“The Art of the Horse & Horse Farm” is on view daily from noon to 4 pm at Featherstone Center for the Arts. www.featherstoneart.org.
