Deborah Butterfield was born in San Diego on May 7, 1949 – the same day as the 75th running of the Kentucky Derby. She attended the University of California, Davis with the intention of becoming a veterinarian but turned to sculpture, receiving her MFA in 1973. By the late 1970s, horses became her primary subject. The artist is an accomplished equestrian who raises and trains horses for dressage and practices competitive dressage. Her art, she says, “relies heavily upon, and often parallels, my continuing dialogue with them [horses].”
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Throughout the 1980s, Butterfield constructed her sculptures by welding cut, torn, bent, dented, and hammered scrap metal. While today’s viewers may be more familiar with her cast-bronze horses derived from wood twigs and branches, Butterfield continues to work in welded steel, creating unique, one-of-a-kind objects, of which Blue Lily is a fine example. Though smaller in scale than the artist’s life-size sculptures, ours is no less commanding. Butterfield’s intimate understanding of equine anatomy infuses Blue Lily with amazing personality, while the remnants of paint that cling to the scrap evoke the former history of the metal from which she is made. Three additional Butterfield horses can be seen in West Michigan: at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and on the terrace at Grand Valley State University’s DeVos Center for Interprofessional Health.