SIMI VALLEY : Artist Honored for Paintings of Horses

Simi Valley artist Pamela Wildermuth says she was one of those young girls whose lives revolved around horses, except that she never grew out of it.

The 44-year-old artist, who recently won the Founders Award from the American Society of Equine Art, said she thinks her obsession is fueled by the power of the animals.

She recalled her first riding lesson.

“For a little 8-year-old girl, being able to command a 1,000-pound animal, it was really a big rush of accomplishment,” Wildermuth said. “Especially for little girls. They don’t have much control over their lives.”

About the same time she began riding horses, Wildermuth’s parents enrolled her in painting class.

“They were always looking for something to keep me busy because I was always bugging them to take me to see the horses,” she said.

Just as vivid as the memory of her first riding lesson is her memory of an early breakthrough in her drawing.

After copying a photograph of a horse from a book, she wondered why her drawing did not look like the photo. Suddenly, she saw that “the eye should go here,” the mouth in another place. She had begun to see negative space, the space surrounding objects, rather than just the objects themselves, she said.

Wildermuth never became “what you would call an ace horsewoman.”

But she has won recognition for her paintings of the animals.

In addition to the recent national award, a Chicago company has picked one of her paintings for a new series of collection plates and is considering using two of her other works. Other honors include an award from the Simi Valley Art Assn.

Wildermuth said she still works from photographs and often has to use a stack of photographs of one horse to make one painting.

Each painting takes from 50 to 200 hours to complete and sells for $500 to $2,000, she said.

“It’s something I feel I have to do. If I don’t spend so many hours a week painting, I get depressed,” she said.

The artist said she wants her audience to see “what it is that I see, what has obsessed me for most of my life.”

“This is an animal that could kill you with one swipe of its hoof, or one bite of its teeth, and yet it’s devoted to serving,” she said.