Missouri artist creates horse sculptures from her woods

AVILLA — With four young children, a farm to run, and limited financial resources, Rachel Wilson needed some art supplies that were close to home and cheap.

She found fallen hedge branches.

Her artist's eye saw horses.

"The sticks that I found ... I could just see that it was horse form," Rachel Wilson said. "They needed to be a large form."

Her horses are certainly large. One is the size of a live plow horse, and they can take the weight of a person almost as easily as the real thing.

Her love of horses, nature and her family are all part of the story, but it starts with the love of art when she was just a child.

"I was always interested in art," Rachel Wilson said.

When she went to Missouri Southern University, it was on a full-ride Thomas Hart Benton scholarship in the fine arts.

"That's when I started taking art seriously," Rachel Wilson recalled. "And it's something I've taken real seriously the last three years."

Her first love was oil painting, but that is "not really kid friendly ... It doesn't wash out well," she said.

So Rachel Wilson moved to acrylics. Her children, ranging in age from 1 to 8, join her, creating their own paintings with the fast-drying, water-based paint.

She recently sold a two-canvas painting — "an abstract take on a still life" — that will hang in the lobby of the Market Station Apartments in downtown Kansas City.

But painting with the kids is not always convenient, and when the weather is nice, everybody likes to get outside. Looking for an outdoors art project this spring led her to the woods.

She decided she would create an "assemblage" out of natural materials on the farm.

"It really started out of necessity," she said. "We were outside already, and I always seem to find something creative I can do."

Now, even her little ones have been working on their own sculptures.

Cost was a additional incentive.

"We've been through some tight times with farming," said Rachel Wilson, a "city girl" from Webb City who now loves the farming life with her husband, Kyle Wilson, a third-generation farmer.

Now, it's a family event. Kyle Wilson drives the pickup truck, and Rachel Wilson and the kids "pick up sticks."

Those sticks are pretty special — they are big, shapely, hard and resistant. "As far as I can tell, it lasts for just about forever," she said of the wood.

Hedge — or Osage orange trees — were planted in the hedge rows and used for fencing. The Wilsons have dug up hedge fence posts placed years earlier that are still green and untouched by rot or bugs.

It's easy to find the fallen branches, especially after the ice storms of 2007 and 2008.

"I don't take anything off living trees," she insisted. "I'm kind of a tree-hugger, I guess."

While the size and shape of the huge branches may have called out "horse" to Rachel Wilson, she may have already been thinking equine.

"It has sentimental value," she said. "The first thing my husband gave me when we got married was a horse. It was something I always wanted as a girl."

About a half dozen of Rachel Wilson's hedge horses have been on display at Art Central in Carthage and will continue to be there through this weekend.

Although the studio is only open noon to 5 p.m. Friday-Sunday, anyone can stop by to see the giant horses standing out front any time, said Sally Armstrong, who manages the studio.

"This is a great setting for them now," Armstrong said, noting that the horses appear to be in their natural setting amidst the fall foliage.

Rachel Wilson entered a single horse earlier this summer in the studio's membership show, and it drew such interest she was invited to display the "herd," all of which are available for sale.

"The motion and the movement that she shows is fantastic," Armstrong said. "It's amazing."

Passers-by, both in cars and on foot, are drawn to the realism and the artistic vision of the sculptures.

"She's just created personality," Armstrong said. "Every one of them has it's own personality."

Wilson has sold two of her horse sculptures and has three people on a waiting list for smaller versions.

"It just worked out," Rachel Wilson said of the availability of the material and the opportunity to create something of such beauty that reflects her own love.

"It's just something I lucked into." she said.