We were lucky to catch up with Karen Keene Day, Wild Horse Artist Day recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Karen Keene Day, Wild Horse Artist, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I was selling my art on a small scale when our children were still growing up. It was not until they were in high school that my sales began to expand by going to shows; first locally and later to other states.
I had already made a decision as a young mother to stay at home with our children, focus on them until they were grown. I really didn’t know where or how I would pursue a career in art. I just knew that art was the career I wanted to do.
I kept a card table up in the corner of a room in our home and no matter how few the minutes, I painted with water colors almost every day. Water color was the easiest medium to leave set up, return to and leave quickly when necessary.
The older our children became, the more shows I went to. The more feedback I got from the public I was very encouraged. There was no going back for me.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
I especially love to paint large expressive images of wild horses for expansive walls in homes or businesses.
Big canvases allow the flowing movement of the horse. Large paintings allow for space for flow of lines and freedom, spatially and the horse’s. Having seen the mustangs’ energy while running in meadows, on mountains, or in the desert, I can feel that when I paint them. I cannot contain them either on the canvas edges.
What sets my work apart from others, is my mustangs pushing on or off the canvas and my line work denoting their freedom. The mustang pushing on or off emphasizes its power and strength. My larger canvases show an impression of a horse‘s size and its motion. I love working big!
What is the strength in my work? That I do not have a degree in art. It bothered me immensely in earlier years that I didn’t have an art degree, but it actually became a strength for the development of my own style as years passed.
I have formed my art through my experiences in the field, observing the mustangs’ movements and interactions with each other and their responses to circumstances around them. I watched their moments: many are subtle. Some of their emotions are big as when two stallions fight. There are smaller moments. The turn of an ear, the drop of the jaw, relaxation or tensing of it. These “moments” gave me the idea and title for my series of my original paintings called “Moments With Wild Horses”@2003.
I took art classes when available as my husband‘s jobs moved us; drawing, watercolor, print making. My own studio development out of the class was good, because nobody was there to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do. Truly my style developed on my own. I can say that the classes I took taught me a lot. They really helped to add to and hasten what I was already learning on my own. It was a great balance. If I had been in school pursuing an art degree in my younger years, I think my art focus and momentum would’ve gone in an entirely different direction.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I was an artist from the time I was a small child. In kindergarten class the large white sheets of paper and the many jars filled with bright colors of tempera paint were mesmerizing to me. Our teacher gave us long handled thick brushes intern just lose to create. It was my absolute joy. I never wanted to leave that class!
When I graduated from high school in 1963, the high school counselor said “women do not become artists. They become teachers or nurses.” Unfortunately, I listened to him and entered into the school of nursing. Within a year I transferred out and into liberal arts. My husband and I got married in college, made plans that he would finish college first while I worked; I would go back to school part time, begin our family and raise three children. We had agreed on all of that.
I wanted very much to be a stay at home mom with our three children, so my goal was to do art full-time after our children were raised. I never gave up on my dream to be an artist through all those years. Somewhere that little joyful kindergarten child was still inside of me.
I kept a card table up in a corner of a room in our home wherever we lived, along with sketching pens, paper and watercolor.
if I only had 5, 10, 15 minutes, I would create some thing, and when it was dry I put it away in a large art envelope. 10 years later I pulled it all out and truly was amazed to see how much I had accomplished.
I believe that it was continuing through all the years to do little artworks every day that gave me the drive and desire to keep on being creative. Later looking at my ten year pile of art, I realized how much I wanted to keep creating.
When our children were grown, my first little studio was a large counter by a bay window in our kitchen. My next studio was one of our children’s bedrooms after she had gone to college. We put a skylight in and a huge work table in the middle of the room. My next workspace was a kindergarten classroom in an old school building. It was the most wonderful space I’ve ever had. The owner said “You can do whatever you want with the walls. Don’t worry about it. We will plaster and paint over when you’re done.”
It was really fantastic to have the expansive space to hang all of my sketches, photos, beginnings of paintings, completed ones, mistakes, failures, successes, ideas. That all gave a flow to my thought process and my journey through creation. Those tall kindergarten windows provided me with great natural light.
I set up old work tables so that I could move from one to the other and found an old architectural table at a garage sale for $35. Later a small cubby office space in the building where my husband worked, became my studio. It was quite a come down from the huge kindergarten room.
The next move was even more disappointing art wise, because I was not able to do any artwork at all for a year. So it went over the years with big spaces to little spaces, to none at all, to card tables in the corner, and finally a large garage in our home.
I exchanged one of my paintings to have a friend cut a hole in the wall and put a window in so I could have light. By the time I ended up with a garage studio, I had arrived through many years of experimentation from realism to expressionism, from watercolors to printmaking, pastels, oils and finally acrylics, accepting my style and being proud of it.
I started taking my work to really nice galleries and was accepted. My sales took off. The crash of 2008 came and with it I had a major drop in sales for two years. I was really depressed and thought I would never see my past success again. My confidence plummeted too.
When my sales picked up again around 2010 my prices which I had attained by 2008, had dropped significantly also. Then I was picked up by a wonderful gallery in Charleston, South Carolina on King Street and enjoyed several more successful years with them.
Life changes as we all know, and adaptations have to continually be made. Another hard change came for me when we moved away again, this time for my husband‘s health. The changes in his health and its challenges brought an immense life change for both of us.
Two of the three galleries I was in closed. The third one and I had agreed to part ways since we were moving so far away from southern USA on the coast of Charleston, to southwest Colorado in the high desert and San Juan mountain region.
Once again I am starting all over and feel very challenged. Very! Our children are grown and have children of their own. I am a Grammie to five wonderful grandchildren. It’s so much fun to see art talent in them as well. With much encouragement from our children and my husband, I have decided it’s time to get moving forward again at 78. I know I can’t stop painting and age will not stop me!
I am starting up again with yet another small studio. After a year working with a web designer, my 15 year old website has finally been updated and new business cards ordered. I have collected businesses’ names and their contact information to begin sending out cards.
I just started painting again and it feels wonderful to be back in the studio. I’ll be making a trip to see the mustangs again soon.
I don’t know what’s next. I’m just putting myself out there and see where it will take me and my art. I will leave the windows and doors open in my heart, mind and soul, trust my intuition and allow myself to be lead in the right direction.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Non-creatives or creatives can be either very supporting of an artist’s style and background or totally unaccepting. I have experienced both. To be rebuked is crushing. It takes time and years to build up resilience and stay the course no matter what anyone else says. I am very thankful for those who love my work and say so. That’s always good to hear. One time I also was told when I had artwork hanging in a show, that I would “never go anywhere, because you do not have an art degree, nor pedigree required for someone to make it in New York.“
Ironically I wasn’t trying to make it anywhere in particular. I just wanted to paint and sell, hopefully keep on helping people to become aware of our nation’s mustangs and want to help protect them. That was my goal from 1999 onward when I first started painting them.
Later that evening at the show, that same person came back and apologized. I appreciated her apology, but the criticism undermined me for a long time. Then a friend said to me that it was good to have had that happen, because it would remind me to always be accepting of all artists’ artwork. She was right! Knowing I could be supportive to others as well, turned me around. Great advice!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.karenkeeneday.com
- Instagram: yes
- Facebook: friends & family only
- Other: hello@karenkeeneday.com
Image Credits
My daughter Kellie Day took the picture of me in the Ridgway town center park a few weeks ago at an art demonstration that I did for the 610 gallery. I’ve Taking the ones of the wild horses while in the field with them. Some others via guide.