For the next 12 days starting on Christmas Day and ending on January 5th (the traditional “12 Days Of Christmas”) I will be featuring 12 equine artists. Over 80 artists entered in the contest to be featured on our Facebook group Art Of The Horse (which has over 3,700 members!). I used this handy tool to randomly pick 12 of the entrants to be featured on TFS. Day nine’s feature artist is Karen Baker Thumm!
Karen Baker Thumm
Michigan, USA
I was one of those horse crazy little girls galloping and snorting my way around the neighborhood and drawing horses constantly including all over my school papers. I “illustrated” my assignments whenever I could work a horse into them.
In fact, horses and art went hand in hand in getting me through a difficult childhood. When I was twelve, I bought my first horse with my own money, but a few months later a bad riding accident forced me to sell her. At that point I gave up riding but never lost my love of horses.
In the years following, I went to college, married and started a family. One summer I took a drawing class at the local college and was hooked on art again. That Fall I enrolled for a degree in Commercial Art, graduating with honors a few years later. But a few years on the job convinced me that the fast paced corporate world of commercial art wasn’t for me. I was way too slow and deliberate.
My next career choice was as a pet portrait artist which morphed into an equine artist a few years later. At that time, I started riding lessons again and quickly bought my second horse, Scottie. He is now 31 years old and still going strong.
My interest in horses is mostly in the English world and in companion horses. I enjoy the excitement of show jumping, polo and fox hunting, but dressage is my special interest. I love spending time at the barn and love to depict every day scenes on horse farms or boarding stables and of going for trail rides.
My favorite medium at the moment is oils, but I’ve worked a lot in pastels and love to draw in graphite. I’m a realist painter who works from my own photographs but usually I change many parts and use multiple photos for one painting or drawing in order to come up with a good composition to portray my vision.
I’m an associate member of Oil Painters of America and of The American Academy of Equine Art, and I belong to a number of local art groups. My concentration these days is on studio art for exhibitions and galleries. I no longer accept commissions.
Art Of The Horse 