Deborah Butterfield is best known for the use of natural materials and found objects to create a psychological portrait of her abstracted equine forms. She held a passionate adoration for horses from a young age, though she was initially discouraged from depicting them in her art studies at University of California at Davis. Butterfield’s horses remain strong and imposing in their tranquility. They stand in opposition of traditional depictions of horses in painting and sculpture as raging stallions symbolic of male power. Her horses are often life-size and constructed from painted bronze cast from wood. Barnswallow is a small-scale representation of a plucky pony characterized by sticks, daubs of mud and feathers from the bird for which it is named.
