The horses gallop through the living room, the kitchen, upstairs, everywhere. One swishes its black head, another loses its feet to blur, another charges from a dark corner, as if out of a fog, bound for glory. They are oil-thick or charcoal-maned. They are artist Jeaneen Barnhart’s babies and they run through her South End house — alongside her painted ladies, the disco ball hanging, the incense burning, the stereo humming Bob Dylan.
Barnhart did not know much about the horse before her 1992 move to Louisville. Had not studied its anatomy, memorized the skeletal structure, the way the hooves turn, the dips and caves in the muscles, the sunken area below the eyes. At Alfred University in New York, the Miami native’s work was abstract, shapeless colors. This a switch from the human figures she used to draw with photographic detail, Frank Frazetta-like. In Louisville, she merged the two extremes — looseness and mystery with solid form and body.
She and a friend would go to Churchill Downs together, watch races, Barnhart analyzing the horses’ motion, spirit. “They are gentle yet determined,” she says. Barnhart’s horses started out fat and beefy, “real Clydesdale-y,” she says. With time came understanding. With time, spontaneity. “I’ll tear up and throw away 26-by-40-inch drawings if they look too overworked,” the 49-year-old says. With time came the painting in a Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium suite, a Woodford Reserve label, the chalkboard drawing in new restaurant La Chasse, many donated pieces to Derby fundraising galas. And, of course, the Kentucky Derby Festival posters, like Barnhart’s most popular print: 2009’s “Beautiful Rampage” — all these cadmium-colored horses running straight at you, the finish line. She keeps the original print in her back sunroom with the paint-stained carpet.
In the front room, vinyl covers the hardwood to catch paint. One canvas worked and reworked in desert oranges and pinks — jockey leg fading into horse’s side, horse’s legs barely there — is finished. “I learned in college to use a handheld mirror and stand far enough away to see the entire painting, see what it needs, the balance, if an eye is off,” she says. “The painting tells you when it’s done.” Another canvas is bright red, horses clouded with bright blue, racing, jockeys steady. Barnhart — who usually will go and go until she finishes a piece in one session — has been at this one for five months. Still can’t get it right. The answer? She leans back on the couch, once-stray-now-spoiled cat at her side, wine in hand, waiting.
Cover Image: Adam Mescan
