Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

You probably didn’t know this was the post you needed. Mustangs + art = fabulous.

The year 2007, the year of the first Spring Creek Basin roundup I attended, was a big year for me (more on this coming in mid-September). This post focuses on my friend and artist Karen Keene Day, whom I met that September, courtesy of Pati and David Temple. Karen and I forged a firm friendship then, and she has been out numerous/many/lots of times since then to see the mustangs. I started visiting Spring Creek Basin in 2002; Karen first visited in 2003. She visited the BLM/USFS office in Durango, and a woman there put her in touch with Pati. “I parked my car in the shade and called Pati … and she didn’t stop talking about the mustangs!”

A lot of us trace our Spring Creek Basin mustangs obsession back to Pati. Fondly so!

Karen has always been an artist … always been a horse lover, though she didn’t have her first horse until adulthood … and in 1999, after her first visit to Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range (Wyoming and Montana), she focused her art, which had always included horses, including Andalusians in Spain, completely on wild horses.

Fast forward from those years to this past Friday night: The opening event was held for Karen’s June art show at Decker Community Room in Ridgway, Colorado. Her absolutely amazing art fills the walls with color and movement and spirit and sheer beauty. And they span her amazing wild-horse-art career from 1999 to 2026. If you find yourself in Colorado, on Colorado’s Western Slope, in the quirky western town of Ridgway, even if you’re just passing through, do your heart and art-appreciating self a favor and stop in to view Karen’s art. The following photos can’t do justice to just how fantastic the entire exhibit looks.

Writer Kathryn Wilder pauses to look at samples of Karen’s art upon arrival at Decker Community Room on Ridgway’s Clinton Street (a short, buzzing few blocks of galleries and restaurants just off the main drag).

Karen (center, black shirt) and her husband, Floyd (seated at right), greeted visitors. We arrived right at the beginning of the opening, and the venue quickly became packed with appreciative art viewers!

Floyd, a retired engineer, is an artist in his own right and also has had showings of his art in Ridgway. His preferred subjects are the cows, calves and bulls that call the ranch country at the edge of the San Juan Mountains home.

Karen’s art comes in many sizes and a variety of semi-similar abstract styles, showing her evolution as an artist. I have loved Karen’s art for nearly 20 years, since I first set eyes on it! I challenge you to be UNmoved by the spirit and movement and beauty illustrated by her vision of wild horses and the wild places they call home. Karen’s quote at upper left: “Peace and unintentional creativity comes to me when I paint.”

You thought mustangs came from drab, dry, desert-brown ranges, didn’t you? The colors she sees in the natural world absolutely inspires me.

You see the faces of horses, don’t you? More proof of Karen’s unique creativity: These are pans she has used below her paintings to catch drips and drops of paint as she boldly creates her art … and then she made art of those very pans! At right are some of her own brushes and drop cloths that she has used while creating her art.

Absolutely gorgeous.

Karen’s exhibit also includes images of her painting and visiting various ranges and wild horse sanctuaries. I love the sketch below the pictures … those are Spring Creek Basin mustangs.

More sketches and journal entries from her visits to mustangs. In addition to Spring Creek Basin, she has visited Pryor Mountain, Little Book Cliffs (near Grand Junction, Colorado), Sand Wash Basin (near Craig, Colorado) and Piceance-East Douglas (near Meeker, Colorado), as well as various East Coast wild horse herds!

You might have noticed that the large black-and-white painting at left in the image above features in a few of the pix. I think that wasn’t necessarily conscious, but that’s Hope, and she is most gratefully mine, gifted to me by Karen many years ago. Karen wanted to include Hope in her art show, and I was thrilled to deliver her to Ridgway, though my wall looks awfully bare without her (I’ll get her back at the end of June). 🙂 Karen and Floyd both told me that many visitors had already told them she was one of their favorites of her paintings in the show.

At right is Chrome. Karen’s words above him read: “A man who moves away from nature loses his heart.”

Kat Wilder wrote “Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West” (scroll down a bit), published in 2021. Yes, *that* Chrome.

My most beloved Grey (also known as Traveler), memorialized and honored in Karen’s vivid vision and colors. I love that his image at left is in “royal” purple; Grey was short for Sir Grey, and by that, I mean(t) king of mustangs. That one was painted in 2013. At right, titled “Return to Disappointment Valley,” 2008: We’re certain that’s Grey after his return to Spring Creek Basin after he was erroneously removed from the basin during the 2007 roundup … and returned a month later, the day I started my documentation of Spring Creek Basin’s mustangs.

Love the detail of his name stenciled down the side of the canvas. And Kat pointed out the word “SOUL” at lower center on the front of Grey.

In Karen’s writing at right: “Animals are God’s gift to people to teach us how to treat others.”

Left to right: Fellow Ridgway resident (for 30-plus years), artist and mustang advocate and adopter (including of Spring Creek Basin mustangs) Alice Billings, Kat (also a mustang advocate and adopter) and yours truly (they made me stand on the downhill side of the ramp :)).

Kat and I with Karen – mustang chix all.

Karen’s art show runs through June 26. All the art comes down June 27. Visit while you can. You will NOT be disappointed (!). 🙂

Karen’s website: https://www.karenkeeneday.com/

Instagram: @karenkeenedayart

Facebook: Look for “Karen Keene Day”