DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD
The myth endures. One of my favorite local examples is the mural in the McDonald’s at the corner of Chicago and State that depicts Jane Byrne, Harold Washington, and other broad-shouldered power brokers on horseback, leaping out through a dramatic rendering of the Chicago skyline into the pedestrian world of burgers and fries.
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A recently published catalog documenting Butterfield’s career carries a photograph of the smiling artist nose-to-nose with two equine friends. Born in 1949 in San Diego and trained in California and Maine, Butterfield moved to Bozeman, Montana, in the late 1970s and taught for many years at Montana State University. Much of her audience is urban, but she herself is a country girl now, and this fact may woo city folk into seeing a kind of pastoral authenticity in her work. Out west, out there on the range where the air is cleaner and where people may actually know how to ride, out there is where beautiful horses are made.
Along the Northwest Tollway toward Harvard large signs advertising equine amusements beckon automobile travelers. One of the more exotic diversions, Medieval Times, entertains customers with sword fights, medieval games, and jousting matches performed by six knights on horseback. Private ranches and rental stables can be found just off the service roads.
