Jill Soukup’s Horses Paintings Evoke American West Fascination
Jill Soukup’s oil horse paintings are striking, vividly displaying the horses’ spirit. By attending to the juxtaposition of colors, movements, and backgrounds, Jill’s paintings capture the horse’s various poses as vigorous and beautiful, free and elegant, tame and docile.
This demonstrates her careful observation of the horses all year round, especially studying the horse’s muscles, bones, and facial dynamics. Furthermore, her strong yet delicate brushwork creates a dramatic situation in the composition, which her admirers love.
In addition, Jill’s paintings evoke people’s fascination with the American West. The grassy pastures, herds of horses, a pair of riding boots, a saddle, and cowboy hat… all elicit nostalgia for American artifacts and lifestyles — a lifestyle that still exists on the ranches of Colorado; there is no hustle-and-bustle of city life. What they have is a traditional ranch lifestyle, riding horses to herd the animals and tending to the affairs on the ranch. It is a place where people can get close to nature and animals and focus on what’s important in life.
Jill’s focus on animal paintings, especially horses on the Colorado ranches, was forged in the early 2000’s, after a decades-long career as a graphic designer. However, her love for horses can be traced back to the time when she was a young girl. Since then, she has demonstrated her love for drawings, especially horses. Later, she further advanced her artistic development by majoring in Fine Arts at Colorado State University, where she learned to push her artistic skills and concepts to the next level. After school, she applied her art training in the graphic design industry. Eventually, the call of the horses drew her back to her roots, and so became a full-time painter of horses and other animals on the ranch.
Because she visited the ranch frequently, Jill was able to study horses’ movements, postures, and expressions in detail. Sometimes she uses photos as a reference, but she says they are no substitute for direct observation. The abstract quality of being at the ranch draws Jill to dig more, be connected with animals, and immerse herself in the life of the ranch.
Jill likes to blend contrasting colors, edges, and forms in her paintings to help her explore the dynamics of her chosen subject. She uses colors as a tool to create drama and direct the viewers’ eyes. Jill prefers the wet-on-wet oil painting technique to create the texture of horses’ coats. To perfect her skill, Jill still takes classes in animal anatomy. For Jill, the fundamentals of drawing are essential to horse paintings: “once the fundamentals are achieved, then one can express the feelings accordingly.”
Currently, Jill conducts “The Painting Horses Workshops” at one of the Colorado ranches once a year. During the workshop, art students live on the ranch for a week to experience the western lifestyle and at the same time learn drawing and paintings from Jill.
