Painter Booth Malone Brings Sporting Art to Life

INTERVIEW BY STEPHANIE PETERS

Booth Malone has been a signature member of the American Academy of Equine Art since 1994 and its president since 2016. He made his international debut with Frost & Reed gallery in St James, London, in 2001. Malone has been the official artist for numerous race meets from the Virginia Gold Cup to last year’s Montpelier Races as well as the 2006 Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs. A signature member of the Oil Painters of America and the Society of Animal Artists, he has completed portrait commissions for AFLAC; 1987 Master’s Champion, Larry Mize; and White House Press Secretary, Marlin Fitzwater. Recent works are on display each fall in the Keeneland/Cross Gate Gallery Sporting Art Auction.

Booth Malone

What influenced you to become an artist?

I did a lot of business-related travel when I first got out of college. I saw the whole country several times over. Whenever I was in a new town, I would consult the AAA TourBook to see what was around. I discovered a lot of great, but relatively obscure, museums that way. At the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I saw a display of Charles Russell paintings, arranged chronologically. It was an epiphany to see just how far he came in his art. His early things were pretty bad, taking him about 10 years to attain the skills we think of as “Charles M. Russell.” Seeing his rudimentary early work really impressed upon me that every artist starts from somewhere near the bottom. The only shame is if you never make the effort to better yourself.

Portrait of William D. Haggard IV, Joint Master of the Mells Foxhounds

The first painting I ever sold was to a colleague at work. She knew I had an art background, and asked if I would paint her something from an old photograph she had. (Serendipity alert: the photo was one of her and her horse). I took great pleasure from painting it and from earning a little money, plus making a friend happy. After that, all the steady income and profit-sharing in the world couldn’t hold me down.

Bullet Work

Do you consider yourself self-taught?

I suppose any artist worth his salt is self-taught. Don’t get me wrong––I’ve had my share of lessons: drawing and painting classes in college. But that is the craft of rendering, learning your materials, and discovering the tried-and-true ways of using them. But becoming an artist, that self-taught stuff–starts afterwards: What do you see? And how do you express what you see? How do you make your art connect with your audience? The ability to create is like a muscle: if it doesn’t get exercised on a regular basis, it never develops. Or if it gets no exercise, it withers away. The best artists teach themselves every time they pick up a brush, and every time they challenge themselves. If you are not learning––if you are not challenging your abilities––you are just doodling.

Fall

So, why paint horses?

Funny you should ask. I had a home-visit IRS audit, and that fellow asked me the same thing. I’ll tell you what I told him:

I was not raised around horses, and I am not a horseman now. When I was young, I could do a mean imitation of Mister Ed (but in 1960 America everyone knew how to say “Wil-bur”). Be that as it may, 20 years later, I was hit over the head by horses. At the very moment I was looking for artistic direction, a friend invited me to his uncle’s farm where they were staging a mom- and pop-style threeday event. I was fascinated. I had never seen so many horses, all of them ridden or managed by seemingly ordinary people who just happened to know how to control 1,200-pound animals. Some of the competitors appeared to be as young as 6 or 7. At that age, I was gluing myself to airplane models.

CAPTURING A HORSE ON PAPER OR CANVASIS DIFFICULT, NO QUESTION ABOUT IT.

Burrland Road

So I fell hard. Not so hard that I bought a horse, but hard enough. I wanted to be part of that world in whatever small way they would have me. I realized how few and far-between horse artists actually are. Capturing a horse on paper or canvas is difficult, no question about it. No animal is so nuanced, nor so uncooperative when the artist is trying to bury a flaw. And often, your audience knows conformation better than you. You have to make the horse look sound. But the challenge is part of the fun––if you plan to be a self-taught horse artist, anyways.

The IRS guy was dozing off at this point, too, so I told him, “I like making brown look good, okay?” He wrote that down.

Walk Up

You have written that good equestrian paintings should reflect more than mere photographic accuracy. How do you mean?

The advent of photography transformed equestrian painting, especially as to the depiction of action. Today, an artist can gather more reference material in an afternoon than Munnings or Stubbs got in a lifetime.

A camera is a pretty handy thing to have. Even Remington used a camera. But I never shoot subjects hoping the result will be a perfect image to paint; I’m usually looking for details. Munnings and Stubbs knew what modern-day painters are fast forgetting: anatomy. They understood horses, rode them, worked them, fed them, and knew a lame horse when they saw one. A camera is not an eye. It just looks and records. A good painting should be more than that—more than the counting of stitches in a bridle.

Untitled

You paint a variety of things in the equestrian world. Do you have a favorite?

I try not to get stuck on any one thing, but I do enjoy the action and camaraderie of fox hunting—the aspect of horse and hounds at work together— and I like to paint dogs. So a well-trained pack of hounds is a delight. Like Munnings and most foxhunters I know, I am rooting for the fox.

Comin’ thru the Rye

Who else inspires your work?

The older I get, the more I enjoy rendering weather conditions. It can’t always be sunny. To that end, I’ve been studying the work of Lanford Monroe and Tom Lovell. Monroe was prominent in the 1980s and ‘90s. Lovell had a much longer career and was more of a historical illustrator. Each can make you smell spring is in the air or make you come inside to warm yourself before a fire.

Three Horses Grazing

Do you have a unique sporting venue or equestrian event that remains on your wish list?

There are plenty of horse things out there I haven’t seen. I hear about new ones all the time. Just point me in the right direction. I would like to try my hand at some western scenes. Though maybe that would make ole Charlie Russell smile and shake his head at me: “You think it was easy?”