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Equine aesthetics

Local mustang has an artistic eye and a collaborative companion

By Lily Raff / The Bulletin

Published: January 12. 2009 4:00AM PST

Sandy Klein stands in front of an easel and examines the latest painting by a budding Bend artist.

She notes the symmetry, which is unusual for this watercolorist’s abstract style. Then she critiques the piece.

“It’s not her best work,” she says before reaching into her fanny pack, grabbing a handful of wet cob and feeding it to the young artist, who stands next to her.

The artist in this case is Nochecita — a 13-year-old mustang whose name means twilight, or dusk.

Klein, the mare’s owner, went to four years of art school and regularly sells her own drawings and paintings at her tack and riding apparel store, Bits & Pieces.

About a year ago, Klein taught Nochecita how to paint. They now collaborate on art pieces and sell giclee prints of their results for up to $250 each.

“Like every good watercolorist, I make sure she puts down a layer of just water first, so the colors kind of blend on their own,” Klein says.

So Klein starts by dipping a paintbrush with a thick, wooden handle into a container of water. Nochecita, wearing a paint-splattered smock, then grabs the brush handle by her teeth, aims the bristles at the easel in front of her and flicks her head a few times before dropping the brush on the ground.

Once the paper is sufficiently wet, Klein takes the brush back and dabs it into a blob of watercolor paint. Nochecita bites the brush and shakes her head again, this time leaving colorful strokes on the paper.

“The more we do it, she seems to have a preference for red,” Klein says.

Scientists say there is conflicting evidence over whether horses can see color.

When Nochecita is done, Klein examines the painting for a shape that inspires her for the next step in the process. In one painting, for example, she penciled an eye, nostril and jaw to turn Nochecita’s abstract strokes into an elegant horse head. She titled the work “Self-portrait.”

“It’s really spontaneous,” Klein says. “And it’s kind of inspired me again.”

For Nochecita, painting is a far cry from her early life as a wild mustang in Nevada. The mare was captured as a yearling and adopted through a Bureau of Land Management program. The mare had been halter broke and gentled by the time Klein bought her 11 years ago.

Klein and her mount now compete in second-level dressage — an English riding discipline in which a horse and rider complete a choreographed series of precise movements.

While training Nochecita, Klein discovered the mare’s affinity for picking up objects with her mouth.

So for fun, Klein started teaching the formerly wild mustang silly tricks to demonstrate her “domesticity.” The horse picks up a feather duster and dusts. She picks up a vacuum cleaner. She “does laundry” by gathering clothes strewn across the ground, shaking them out and dropping them in a hamper.

“She definitely likes to do laundry more than she likes to do dressage,” Klein says with a laugh.

Klein got the idea to teach her horse to paint after she saw an elephant painting at a zoo. The elephant held the brush straight out from its mouth, the same way Nochecita enjoys holding Klein’s dressage whip.

“I thought, if an elephant can do it, why can’t a horse?” Klein says.

Other animal artists

Dogs have been taught to paint, too. And Nochecita is not, it turns out, the only painting horse in the U.S.

Cheryl Ward, a Florida-based artist and horse trainer, has trained four of her own horses to paint. A painting by one of her horses sold for $3,500. She recently published a free, 10-page pamphlet called “Teach Your Horse to Paint,” which can be downloaded at www.painting horse.com.

“I truly in my heart believe that all horses can paint,” Ward says.

Ward first taught her Paso Fino gelding, Romeo, to paint in 2004. Romeo was 8 years old when Ward bought him, but the troubled horse had already gone through seven owners. To rehabilitate the fearful equine, Ward employed “clicker” training, which is a technique developed by dolphin trainers and based entirely on positive reinforcement.

Ward helped Romeo build a sense of confidence and control by teaching him to manipulate his environment by moving objects around. About a year into the training, Romeo, who had once been afraid to open his mouth for the bit, was picking up Ward’s helmet and handing it to her while she sat on his back.

One of the objects that he learned to move around was a paintbrush. One day, Ward held a canvas in front of Romeo, and he quickly touched his brush to it. Ward rewarded Romeo with a click — a noise he already recognized as positive reinforcement. The next day, Ward put paint on Romeo’s brush before he picked it up. He completed his first painting that day.

Ward has since taught three other horses to paint. She and her steeds are currently on hiatus from painting, however, because Ward believes the reward-based training that she used to teach painting could be expanded and applied to traditional forms of equitation and horseback riding.

Ward says she uses “attractive” methods of training. In other words, she trains the horse to target a desired object and then uses that object to coax the horse into behaving the way she wants. To load her horses into a trailer, for example, Ward holds a sponge that the horses like and they follow her into the vehicle.

“With most forms of training, trainers apply pressure to the horse and their reward is the release of pressure,” she says. “I want to share with people another way, because some horses don’t respond well to pressure.”

A rising star

Klein, who used a similar training method with Nochecita, has no plans to fold up the easel anytime soon.

“I think the more she does it, the more she knows what she’s doing,” Klein says of her horse’s painting abilities.

Klein is designing a Web site for Nochecita, who will conduct painting demonstrations at the Bend Summer Festival later this year.

“As soon as I bring her out and she sees the easel, she knows what she’s supposed to do,” Klein says. “And she loves a crowd.”

Lily Raff
can be reached
at 541-617-7836 or at lraff@bendbulletin.com.

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