Butterfield, Deborah

Deborah Butterfield, in full Deborah Kay Butterfield, (born May 7, 1949, San Diego, California, U.S.), American sculptor known for her semiabstract elegant sculptures of horses, made initially from natural and found materials.

Butterfield’s passion for horses began during her childhood. When she attended the University of California (UC), Davis, she found it difficult to choose between art and veterinary medicine. Ultimately choosing art, she earned a B.A. in 1972. That summer she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and she returned to UC Davis for an M.F.A. (1973). From 1974 to 1977 she taught sculpture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, first as a lecturer and from 1975 as an assistant professor. From 1977 to 1979 she was a visiting artist at Montana State University in Bozeman, and she joined the faculty there in 1979 as an assistant professor and later became an adjunct assistant professor (1984–87). Though she dedicated her professional career to art-making, Butterfield lived her life with her husband, artist John Buck, on a ranch in Montana, where they kept horses. She was active in competitive dressage, the practice of training horses to execute precise movements and maneuvers.

Using plaster over a steel frame, Butterfield created her first sculpture of a horse in 1973. She created tame unbridled mares in calm postures, because she viewed her sculptures both as metaphorical self-portraits and as a feminist response to the aggressive and charged stallions that dominate the painting and sculpture of Western art. In the mid-1970s, she turned to natural materials and began using a mix of mud, salvaged sticks, tree parts, and straw to cover the frame of the horse. She received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 1977 and 1980, and she achieved a major career breakthrough when she was included in the 1979 Whitney Biennial.

In 1980, in addition to her second NEA grant, Butterfield earned a Guggenheim fellowship, which she used to travel to Israel and make art from steel and other materials she salvaged from junkyards in Jerusalem. In 1981 the Israel Museum held an exhibition of that work called “Jerusalem Horses” and acquired one of the sculptures from that series. Although her subject matter remained horses, her project in Israel ushered in a new period in which she used found industrial materials, such as scraps of metal, tires, and barbed wire. Despite the hard edges of her medium, Butterfield’s horses retained a fluidity and grace in their various postures. In the mid-1980s she began creating wooden armatures and having them cast in bronze. The bronze was then treated to resemble wood. Her use of bronze ensured her works a longer life, especially since many were exhibited outdoors. Butterfield’s sculptures range in size from about three feet (one metre) high to life-size. Her familiarity with and understanding of equine physiology made her works both sensitive and powerful, giving them great emotional depth and an almost visible tenderness. Each successive portrait was fresh and provided new insight.