Deborah Butterfield, (1949- ), American artist, whose sculptures of horses have provided a means for her experiments with different materials and approaches to sculptural form. Her many sculptural incarnations of the horse express subtle variations of pose, gesture, emotion, and metaphor.
Butterfield started making life-sized horse sculptures in 1973, toward the end of the Vietnam War. She saw the mare as a symbol for patience, intuition, strength, and affirmation of life, standing in opposition to the destructive impulses of war. She also wanted to change the association of horse sculptur…
