Chris Waters All the Pretty Little Horses
Artist Statement
What I love in art is that it takes known combinations and reorders them in a way that sheds light on something that they have never seen before or allows to consider the world in a slightly different way.
-Kehinde Wiley
All the Pretty Little Horses
I have always been a representational painter who has often worked against the prevailing fashion. I went to college in a world of abstraction. I received my MFA at the University of Wisconsin in 1977, at a time when performance and abstraction/non-objection were much preferred to what I did. Still, I painted and worked to make my work relevant and important. I thought of the work I did then as political and maybe it was but coyly and politely so. When I graduated I taught around, finally finding myself at the University of Michigan-Flint which has been, for 32 years, fiercely my home. There, I started the art program (now a four degree program) and served, between forays back to the department, about 16 years in various administrative roles. As I approached retirement I went back in the art department, again as chair, attempting to leave it in the best possible shape I could.
Over my decades at UM-Flint I painted. This was required for promotions, of course (I have been a full professor for over a decade) but I have painted, too, because I am driven to do so. The administrative years made production harder (not to mention having and raising my children) but I managed to move through a number of series. The first, which underwent several iterations over the years, began as I was developing a course in women as artists (writing them back into history). At that time I also had a toddler daughter who could undress Barbie but failed at re-dressing her resulting in Barbies throughout the house, naked, semi-naked, and often in suggestive poses. The Barbies I painted appeared in reproductions of historical paintings by men, replacing those impossible women they included in their works. My Barbies took a darker turn when they became victims of abuse and bondage. Then there was the series about the City of Flint from my studio in the 11th floor of a campus building. Flint had been through a lot by then but looked so beautiful, still, with air between me and the views. There were little series, too, like my responses to the Flint Water Crisis. Each series was very personal to me and reflected my connection to the subject at hand. So how does that relate to this body of work?
This work is an entirely new collection of paintings. These paintings are all the same size, 48” x 30”, are all oil on canvas, and are all portraits of horses who are owned and loved by my friends and me. They are painted in a style loosely influenced by the work of Kehinde Wiley. In them, there are two things I am trying to connect. This first is my love for the work of the artist Kehinde Wiley (Barack Obama’s portrait artist) and the second is the fact that, though I have been a horse fanatic/devotee for over 25 years, I have never, until recently, found a way to include horses in my art. I saw my first Wiley at the Columbus Art Museum quite a number of years ago. It was one of his very large equestrian paintings and I was smitten. I was entranced not only by the technical skill but the message in the work blew me away too. I now look for his paintings everywhere and have found them in every major collection including the Detroit Institute of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Toledo Art Museum, and even Flint’s own Mott-Warsh Gallery in Flint, Michigan (What a treat!). I was so happy when President Obama chose Mr. Wiley to paint his official presidential portrait. There was something so right about it. Wiley’s portraits are “street cast”, weaving common black men and women into historical paintings done by white, western artists, of historically important white people. His contemporary street cast figures become intertwined with their historical backgrounds in sometimes surprising and clever ways.
The connection I find between my own recent work and that of Mr. Wiley’s is not exact. I am making portraits of horses. They are not famous horses but the unheralded; those who didn’t win ribbons or races, not best example of their breed but horses that belong to me and my friends. They are in a way “street cast”. My notion, inspired by Mr. Wiley, is to paint these historically unimportant horses with backgrounds that are patterns that made sense with each horse. The historically important background is not always the goal but in a couple of cases, like the painting “Tristan”,it is.
These paintings are not for sale and will become the property of each horse’s owner at the end of this exhibition. They are not commissions but acts of love.
-Kehinde Wiley
All the Pretty Little Horses
I have always been a representational painter who has often worked against the prevailing fashion. I went to college in a world of abstraction. I received my MFA at the University of Wisconsin in 1977, at a time when performance and abstraction/non-objection were much preferred to what I did. Still, I painted and worked to make my work relevant and important. I thought of the work I did then as political and maybe it was but coyly and politely so. When I graduated I taught around, finally finding myself at the University of Michigan-Flint which has been, for 32 years, fiercely my home. There, I started the art program (now a four degree program) and served, between forays back to the department, about 16 years in various administrative roles. As I approached retirement I went back in the art department, again as chair, attempting to leave it in the best possible shape I could.
Over my decades at UM-Flint I painted. This was required for promotions, of course (I have been a full professor for over a decade) but I have painted, too, because I am driven to do so. The administrative years made production harder (not to mention having and raising my children) but I managed to move through a number of series. The first, which underwent several iterations over the years, began as I was developing a course in women as artists (writing them back into history). At that time I also had a toddler daughter who could undress Barbie but failed at re-dressing her resulting in Barbies throughout the house, naked, semi-naked, and often in suggestive poses. The Barbies I painted appeared in reproductions of historical paintings by men, replacing those impossible women they included in their works. My Barbies took a darker turn when they became victims of abuse and bondage. Then there was the series about the City of Flint from my studio in the 11th floor of a campus building. Flint had been through a lot by then but looked so beautiful, still, with air between me and the views. There were little series, too, like my responses to the Flint Water Crisis. Each series was very personal to me and reflected my connection to the subject at hand. So how does that relate to this body of work?
This work is an entirely new collection of paintings. These paintings are all the same size, 48” x 30”, are all oil on canvas, and are all portraits of horses who are owned and loved by my friends and me. They are painted in a style loosely influenced by the work of Kehinde Wiley. In them, there are two things I am trying to connect. This first is my love for the work of the artist Kehinde Wiley (Barack Obama’s portrait artist) and the second is the fact that, though I have been a horse fanatic/devotee for over 25 years, I have never, until recently, found a way to include horses in my art. I saw my first Wiley at the Columbus Art Museum quite a number of years ago. It was one of his very large equestrian paintings and I was smitten. I was entranced not only by the technical skill but the message in the work blew me away too. I now look for his paintings everywhere and have found them in every major collection including the Detroit Institute of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Toledo Art Museum, and even Flint’s own Mott-Warsh Gallery in Flint, Michigan (What a treat!). I was so happy when President Obama chose Mr. Wiley to paint his official presidential portrait. There was something so right about it. Wiley’s portraits are “street cast”, weaving common black men and women into historical paintings done by white, western artists, of historically important white people. His contemporary street cast figures become intertwined with their historical backgrounds in sometimes surprising and clever ways.
The connection I find between my own recent work and that of Mr. Wiley’s is not exact. I am making portraits of horses. They are not famous horses but the unheralded; those who didn’t win ribbons or races, not best example of their breed but horses that belong to me and my friends. They are in a way “street cast”. My notion, inspired by Mr. Wiley, is to paint these historically unimportant horses with backgrounds that are patterns that made sense with each horse. The historically important background is not always the goal but in a couple of cases, like the painting “Tristan”,it is.
These paintings are not for sale and will become the property of each horse’s owner at the end of this exhibition. They are not commissions but acts of love.
