Cigar by Nancy Kleck, 24 x 30 inches, oil on canvasEquine and sporting artist Nancy Milburn Kleck has relocated her art studio from the Kentucky Bluegrass country where she lived for twenty-five years to Bluemont, Virginia, near historic Upperville and Middleburg. She relishes the opportunity to expand the scope of her work from mostly racehorses to the foxhunting field as well.
“Last year I had some work accepted in the Art at the Mill Art show in Millwood, Virginia and discovered the area through the show,” Nancy explains. “I fell in love with the beauty, the friendliness of the people, the artistic opportunities, and of course, the horses! And because of Secretariat and the Thoroughbred farms here in Virginia, I was familiar with Middleburg and its deep history of foxhunting and other equestrian sports in the area.”
Horses and art were early interests while growing up in her native New Orleans.
“Art runs in the family,” says Nancy. “My paternal grandmother was a very good watercolorist, and I inherited my talent from her. But I didn’t go to art school. I had been given a horse in my junior year of high school, and I would not sell him, so we both went to the state college, LSU. I took classes in art, animal sciences, and other subjects I liked, but never got a degree. Going to The Fair Grounds Race Course opened my eyes to the most beautiful, amazing athlete of the animal kingdom, and to this day, thirty-five years later, the equine form still fascinates me.”
With charcoal and pastels, Nancy’s technique is more Impressionistic.“Early on, I had the idea that if I got good enough to paint Thoroughbred racehorse portraits, because of the purses and money earned by stakes winners, I could make a living. It was those horses that Stubbs and others immortalized. And it was a tradition in painting I wanted to be part of.”
After college, Nancy spent a few years in New York, and through her secretarial job at Sotheby’s in their public relations department, she began to see more sporting art. By then she had discovered George Stubbs, Sir Alfred Munnings, W. Smithson Broadhead and many others. It fueled her ambition to become a horse painter, but she painted very little at the time. Two more years in Boston while working for the famed Thoroughbred owner of Dancer’s Image, the only Kentucky Derby winner to be disqualified, made her decide to get to the center of the Thoroughbred industry—Lexington, Kentucky.
Through twenty years of study, observation, lots of practice and a little luck, Nancy became the painter she had always dreamed of being while a teenager. But her first commission did not come the usual way.
“I didn’t start painting until I was thirty-five—a seriously late bloomer!” she admits. “In the late eighties, I was a copywriter for a Thoroughbred weekly in Lexington, painting on weekends by copying photographs from magazines to teach myself how to paint and to learn about the conformation of the horse. In the same week I got a raise, I was fired for asking a gentleman not to smoke a cigar in my office. Remember, it’s Kentucky, a tobacco state. In the search for a new job, I interviewed with a leading blood-stock agency. I didn’t get the job, but after talking about my interest in painting, the owner gave me my first commission—to paint the great Nashua. Throughout the process, I would bring the painting to him and he’d critique it and talk with me about conformation. When I delivered the finished portrait to him, he said, ‘You should be doing nothing but painting.’ Those simple words were the affirmation I was seeking, and from then on, I’ve never looked back.”
Nancy calls her technique a natural, classic realism. The nature of the horse’s coat and musculature call for it, if an authentic rendering is what you’re after, she says. Her focus is getting an accurate read on the horse’s conformation, an absolute essential in equine portraiture, and capturing a familiar expression.
“I was attracted to oil because of its array of colors, blending properties, and the ability to prolong the drying process—especially important when doing large portraits,” she says. “And the detail; it’s all in the details, the lights and darks. I often hear from clients that the subjects in my portraits ‘look back at me.’”
With charcoals and pastels, her technique is impressionistic and more dramatic, a respite, she says, from working in color and realism.
“Charcoals allow me to express the energy and motion of the equine and dramatically use light in a chiaroscuro [light-dark] approach,” she explains.
Most of Nancy’s subjects have been Thoroughbreds from the racing and breeding worlds. With over 300 paintings in her career, her work hangs in private collections in the United States and the United Kingdom, the Fair Grounds Race Course Museum in New Orleans, appears as color plates in *Notable North American Thoroughbreds,* on the cover of *Keeneland Magazine* and was featured in *Minnesota Thoroughbred Magazine.* Several limited edition prints have been made from her portraits as well. She’s often asked to paint a jockey wearing a particular owner’s silks, something she enjoys because “I get to use colors I don’t use often, like hot pink and orange!”
“Last year I had the great pleasure of painting two foxhunters whose owners are with the Camargo Hunt, and they could not be more devoted and passionate about their horses and the sport,” Nancy says. “Back in January of this year, I began to follow the Blue Ridge Hunt with their former huntsman, now wheel whipper-in, Chris Howells. It was great fun to see the hunt from this perspective, and I learned a lot about the fox, the horses, and the sport from Chris.
“Watching the variety of horse breeds used as field hunters was educational, as well as the hounds at work. I have fallen in love with the foxhound and have painted several portraits recently.”
Now a social subscriber with the Blue Ridge Hunt, Nancy hopes to hilltop in the future with one of her two off-the-track Thoroughbreds. Like most artists, while working on current commissions, Nancy must look ahead.
“I am working on some paintings to hang in The Shaggy Ram in Middleburg, and a small show in the future may be in the works,” she says. “Owner Joanne Swift has graciously let me set up my easel in front of the shop on weekends to show my work, and schmooze about art and animals. Painting is my passion, and I love talking art with people, especially about their horses and dogs!”
More of Nancy’s work may be seen on her website.
Posted May 29, 2012