Kay Witherspoon: From Lipstick Scribbles to Painting Polo Ponies

By Shya Beth

Kay Witherspoon’s goal as an artist has always been to create paintings that offer more than just visual appeal. After Kay’s first scribbles with her mother’s lipstick on her childhood home’s walls at a mere 4 years old, her father made a long chalkboard in the basement where Kay and her siblings could doodle, keeping the cosmetics safe. Who could have known that as Kay became an adult, she would become world renowned for her equine and wildlife art, with a career spanning decades and covering polo, Western, portraits and landscape paintings that hang in collections worldwide?

“I want my work to affect the viewers’ six senses as if they were right there with me, feeling, hearing, sensing what I did and what

I painted for them,” Kay said. “That’s how I can transport my viewers to the actual place, time and experiences when first I encountered the painting’s subject.” Horses only became a part of Kay’s early life, growing up in a family of seven in Billings, Montana, when visiting her aunt and uncle’s Wyoming cattle ranch that had belonged to her grandparents. It was during those visits and spending time with the working horses on the ranch that Kay fell in love with all things horses.

“I sculpted horses out of paper mache and wrote school assignments about the origins of horses,” Kay explained. “I was completely horse crazy, and still am. During my high school years, I rode horses working cattle with my uncle in the summers.” Upon graduating from the University of Montana in 1972, Kay worked for the forest service with her husband, riding horses and mules while helping to clear hunting trails and taking research scientists into the interior of the Salmon River Wilderness area. Not surprisingly, Kay’s first equine oil painting was of her riding mule, Brandy.

During college, Kay transferred out of art as her major because the art department did not offer classical realism. She transferred into secondary education and graduated in 1971 with a BA in art and history education. After teaching both subjects at the high school level for several years, Kay moved to Denver, Colorado, seeking better employment. That led to Kay’s six-year career in real estate. The marketing skills she acquired ultimately helped her with marketing her artwork, which she continued to pursue during weekend excursions into Colorado’s high country.

 

Creating Art Through Life

In the early ’70s, Kay had the opportunity to have private lessons with Hall Diteman, an artist who trained in Italy and was well known for his realistic landscapes. “He told me that I needed to ‘feel’ the bark of the tree, the cold of the water and the moisture in the air in order to paint it,” she said. “I don’t believe an artist can do this if working just from photographs. While I work from my photographs, I deeply believe an artist must directly experience whatever it is that he or she paints, in order for the painting to have any meaning or any emotional appeal to another person.”

This is one of the reasons why Kay thinks plein air painting—live, outdoor painting—is so popular. The way sunlight flickers so quickly, galloping polo ponies rush on, changing the scene in an instant—these are moments of time that artists are attempting to capture, and it takes practice and skill to be able to paint life as it is seen. Kay uses photographs to capture the fast action and what she didn’t see at the time by taking a series of explosive shots as the polo teams race across the field. She then uses them to finish paintings in her studio.

“If I painted strictly from a single photo of a polo event, I might have captured a fault, or the bad position of a player at that moment—something that would detract from the visual and emotional impact of what I want to express,” Kay explained. “A single photo wouldn’t capture the emotion of the moment. Mood and emotion are intertwined, and part and parcel with the light that the artist has chosen to depict.” Time spent among the polo players and ponies helped not only make her work authentic, but got Kay hooked on polo ponies, and, by extension, the game itself.

Chasing the Horizon

In 2001, one of Kay’s most international artistic opportunities came in the form of being invited to display her paintings at a prestigious horse race in Dubai, an opportunity which could have been life changing. Unfortunately, that was right after the attack on the twin towers, and shortly thereafter the event was canceled as the organizers were nervous of the political fallout with the United States following the terrorist attack. With the disappointment of the exhibition falling through, Kay started to branch out and explore painting landscapes and wildlife—most notably elk, mountain sheep and moose—with horses still being her most desired subject.

In both 2014 and 2015, Kay took part in two 60-mile, two-day, 700-head horse drives in northern Colorado that still inspire her to this day. “The horses included primarily national and state park trail horses, draft horses and saddle horses,” she said. “While on these drives, I witnessed a dangerous stampede and a wide variety of settings from early morning runs to dusty, high mountain climbs, water crossings, summer heat and even a dusting of snow. Such experiences further trained and excited my artistic senses, with wildly divergent experiences. I acquired even more tools, skills and senses that built upon one another, allowing me to communicate in a deeper way with my audience.”

In October, Kay was asked to participate in Great Britain Guards Polo Club’s “Ten Goal Magazine” for the second time, after her inclusion in the 2015 Guards Polo Official Yearbook. “It’s an honor to be in the publication again, and refreshing to get back to polo,” Kay said.

Drawing from her skills with painting polo riders, Kay has been honing a new skill of painting people—more specifically, painting her granddaughters. “So, who knows where that will take me,” she said. “With Colorado’s highways and America in general becoming more and more congested, I’m spending more time painting our diminishing natural world and the fascinating creatures that are dependent upon it.”

For more information, visit kaywitherspoon.com