alegre

ACRYLIC ON CANVAS • 48x48" • $5,200

Spring Creek Basin mustang mare

STATUS: AVAILABLE

Alegre was Alpha’s daughter.  A horse’s disposition often replicates her mother’s.  Alpha was a wonderful mother, and in turn Alegre followed in her mother’s footsteps. I saw the watchful eye of these mothers, and other mothers and their daughters, and thought of calming pale blue teal as a mother’s tenderness and deep crimson red as her strength. The band of color across the top of the painting, just behind Alegre’s head, are the rim rocks in Spring Creek Basin.  Entering Spring Creek Basin unfolds almost 22,000 acres of desert. Looking straight out from the first hill it looks flat and dry, some rolling, void of any succulent plant life or moisture The first flat appearance is deceiving. Squinting your eyes tightly to see as far as possible, you might see a white round object and think like I do that it is a gray horse grazing in the distance.  Sometimes it is just a big white rock.  Venturing further into the vastness on the winding dirt roads, deep cut away arroyos appear and give pause for the need to make decisions for safe crossings.  Sagebrush and Juniper trees whirled by the winds into beautiful dried twisted gray sculptures seem to be all there is.  If you’re lucky, you might see red blooming cactus at the right time. Yet even the wispiest dry grass holds nutrition for the mustangs.   Foothills, flat tops, the La Sal Mountains way off in the distance and some nearer peaks like Temple Butte, named for Pati Temple, surround all of this. Searching for the mustangs in this terrain can leave one without success of sightings at the end of a long, hot, windy and bug-bite filled day.  I’m glad I haven’t had too many of those days. I am glad for the mustangs, too, that sometimes they can be elusive from human eyes.