Karen Kasper is a well-known name among horse breeders, especially those with connections to Arabian horses, the breed that piqued her interest and inspired the artist early on. Since then, Karen has created 139 portrait bronzes of Arabian horses. Of those, 112 are from live models, and 27 are based on historical studies.
To meet her models, Karen traveled long distances, often to the Middle East, from where the pure Arabian horse originates. She then returned home and sculpted them in the Bluegrass State, where she lives in a historical Kentucky home near Lexington with her husband, Ray.
At the end of the creative process, the Kasper bronzes traveled back to the horse owners, breeders and art collectors. They have found their way into collections in 28 countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Germany, England, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Karen stressed the benefit of bonding with a live model in its natural environs and studying the horse from nature. “I like to know exactly what I am trying to express because I love the individuality of the horses,” she said.
This approach lends itself to the distinctive realism she is constantly honing. Karen’s favorite moments are with the horse, especially at a time when her clay is already in process. She first takes pictures of her model and studies everything about the horse. Later in her career, she began taking skeletal measurements of her live studies.
With the sculpture underway, Karen then goes back to face her model. “Usually, they are in the paddock or in the stall, and all my questions are answered in front of me,” she said.
She thinks body language is as important in horses as it is in people. There are certain ways the horse might stand if it is feeling a certain emotion, and their psychology is understood when you are attentive.
“It took me years to realize that the most important artistic goal for me is truth,” Karen said. Truthfulness also applies to feelings about the living being in front of her. She is not finished with a sculpture until she feels it is done right. “Nature is the greatest teacher” is a quote she likes to go by. It comes from her historical mentor, painter George Stubbs (1724-1806), who, like Karen, was a successful self-taught artist.
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Karen’s bonding with horses stems from her childhood in rural Wisconsin, where, as a young girl, she had an artistic gift and a love for these animals, although they were never part of her family narrative. Nobody she knew had horses or rode horses. Yet, Karen knew exactly where to peer through a fence to catch a glimpse of a Shetland pony in a neighborhood backyard. She longed to be near horses and collected anything that had to do with them—postcards, magazine clippings and her cherished chapter book on horses, which she bought at age 7 with her birthday money. It was in this book that Karen first saw paintings of Arabian horses, which struck her as especially beautiful.
By sixth grade, Karen’s school papers were filled with horse drawings, prompting her homeroom teacher to send her to the principal’s office. An artist himself, the principal tested her drawing skills and sent her back to class with a charcoal pencil. It thrilled her. She was gently encouraged to draw, just not during class. This early advice went a long way.
Karen continued to draw and develop her artistic voice. She married, and she and Ray operated a dairy farm in Wisconsin with the intention to start a family there. “It was love at first sight,” she remembered. To help make ends meet, Karen worked at an insurance company until their first son, Jeremy, was born in 1979. While Karen was in the maternity ward, Ray delivered a gift. It was a set of paintbrushes and oils presented with his heartfelt wish: “I want you to stay home and be the horse artist you dreamed to be.” And she did as he said. She likes to add with amusement that their three children knew the kitchen as an art studio. “I don’t cook there very much,” she said with a laugh.
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In 1981, the couple established the Karen Kasper Studio. The artist explained in detail the meaning of that name: “I am Karen, and Ray is Kasper. And together, we are Karen Kasper Studio. Without him, I am just plain Karen.”
Ray always has been an important partner in her studio work. He brought his talents and developed expertise in the necessary processes of molding, casting and finishing bronzes. Karen remembered one time when they attended an Egyptian event show and Ray said, “You can’t walk 5 feet without people coming up to you, and nobody knows who I am.”
Karen sensed a hint of frustration dressed in a sense of humor. She went to a kiosk where embroidered jackets and hats were for sale and ordered a hat with “Karen’s Husband” embroidered on it. Ray laughed and wore it with pride. It proved to be quite effective, as he needed to wear it only once, and people would come up to him laughing, knowing instantly who he was.
In 2011, the World Arabian Horse Organization Conference took place in Doha, Qatar. At the event, Karen exhibited 20 percent-scale portrait bronzes of the three champion Arabian stallions of the distinguished equestrian center Al Shaqab, owned by The Father Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani. Karen gave a personal slide presentation to the large audience, showing all the steps of creating the portraits. When she got to the slide where the clays were finished and ready for the molds, Ray appeared on the screen, layering the rubber mold and casting its plaster shells. Karen remembered commenting to the crowd, “Few people are blessed to meet someone who is their life’s mate and also an equal partner in their life’s work.”
Over the next two years, the Kaspers enlarged these three stallion sculptures from the original 20 percent-scale maquettes to life-size, then molded and cast them in bronze. These spirited sculptures of Gazal Al Shaqab, Marwan Al Shaqab and Al Adeed Al Shaqab now grace the entrance of the Al Shaqab stadium in Doha, greeting visitors to the international equestrian events held at the venue.
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To follow Karen’s trajectory is to observe her deeper spiritual connection. Certain essential ingredients contributed to the extraordinary life that Karen created for herself, Ray and their three now-adult children. Curiosity and passion fueled her inquisitive and diligent mind. Self-study was in her DNA. Talent, will of steel, faith and her ability to convey her vision brought her to success in the world of equine art. Few people could adhere to their childhood dream and see it through the way Karen did.
Since her first sculpture in 1984 of an Arabian mare’s head titled “The Amulet”—an image Karen first saw in a continuing dream—she hasn’t let go of the desire to continue rendering the natural beauty of the Arabian horse. She was drawn to its unique characteristics: a high neck and tail carriage and an elegantly dished head with large eyes set widely apart. The mare in “The Amulet” is wearing a teardrop pendant, and Karen imagined that her owner might put a blessing on the horse and enclose it in an amulet such as the one depicted. The bronze sculpture was released as an edition of 20.
What happened next gave Karen a reason to continue to sculpt. In a horse magazine, she read about an Arabian mare named Moniet el Nefous, a beautiful historic broodmare from Egypt. Karen fell in love with the mare and her family from reading the article and later found a granddaughter of Moniet el Nefous for sale in Indiana. When Karen saw a video of the granddaughter, Malmiri, she instantly knew she was her dream horse.
A young mother of three at the time, Karen couldn’t afford the asking price for the mare. So, on a lark, she wrote the owner that she was a young artist just starting out who had done her first bronze, and his mare was her dream horse. The owner, Bob Waddell, turned out to be an art collector, and he asked the sculptress to send him a picture of her first bronze, “The Amulet.” Upon seeing the work, he replied, “I think you have talent, and I want to see what you will do with it. I will accept your bronze as a down payment for this mare.”
As the businessman and philanthropist Waddell was, he also asked Karen to make him a proposal of what she would sculpt next. She didn’t even know she would continue sculpting, but in that moment, she came up with a tailor-made answer for her new patron. “I would love to sculpt Malmiri’s grandmother from Egypt, her four sons, and one daughter who were imported to the United States,” she said.
Karen took a leap of faith that landed her a commission for six full-body sculptures that became the foundation for her life’s work. “The Moniet Family” collection of bronzes was unveiled in Lexington in 1986 at an event at Fasig-Tipton Thoroughbred sales company.
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In 1992, Kasper joined fellow members of The Pyramid Society on a trip to Egypt to view Egyptian Arabian horses in their homeland. She discovered that the quality of light there was different, even from the other Gulf countries. She believes it has to do with sand particles high up in the atmosphere diffusing the light, and this observation helped her understand old Orientalist paintings better. The artistic treatment of light is a big factor in most realistic renditions. Karen recalled that it was a fellow artist back in Wisconsin who first encouraged her to try sculpting and recognized that she had a strong understanding of three dimensions in her early paintings. It was Karen’s chiaroscuro—the treatment of light and shade defining form—that drew the artist’s attention. She had to look the term up in a dictionary back then.
During Karen’s visit to the Egyptian Agricultural Organization farm near Cairo, she went on another personal search. With all her friends attending a horse show there, she found an elderly Egyptian groom and asked him where the historic broodmare Moniet el Nefous, the grandmother of her mare Malmiri, had lived. Karen wanted to stand in the same sand where this beloved broodmare had stood. The groom showed her to “the old mares’ paddock,” where retired mares would go and live the end of their days with respect. As Karen slid under the fence, she saw a nugget of turquoise—her birthstone—that she believed was placed there for her in a magical way. She still treasures the turquoise as her personal amulet.
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Karen’s affection for mares and foals goes back to her working summers at a horse farm as a teenager. It grew stronger during the four decades she and Ray bred Egyptian Arabian horses on their farm. Since her sculpture of the Egyptian broodmare, Karen has portrayed many great foundation mares in the Arabian breed for owners worldwide.
Historically, the Arabian horse has been a gift of high esteem, especially among royalty. In 1937, the Saudi Arabian desert-bred mare Turfa was presented to King George VI of the United Kingdom as a coronation gift by King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia. Karen captured Turfa in bronze. The sculpture was premiered at the British Museum in 2012 as part of the major exhibition The Horse: From Arabia to Royal Ascot and is now part of her exhibit at the Kentucky Horse Park.
“Karen Kasper is an inspiration to me, a true sister and friend,” said an important patron, collector and Arabian horse breeder who will remain anonymous. “We think alike, and we talk alike, and our ambitions soar high and over the sky. As for her art, I can never forget when we did the project of Bint Bukra, and a mare of mine wore the Bint Bukra halter. Karen said it gave her a new perspective, and I received bronzes of my two old mares that are magical. I salute you, Karen Kasper, proud to have you as a member of the family.”
“There are people who change the course of your life, but you don’t know it at the moment,” Karen said. She is grateful to those people who helped her as mentors and patrons. Now, she wants to be that person for others. To that end, she enjoys giving presentations on the Arabian horse in art and occasional sculpting workshops with aspiring equine artists, both at home and abroad.
Throughout the years, the Kaspers have donated numerous bronzes to art auctions to benefit worthy causes. From producing limited-edition prints in support of educational programs on the Arabian horse to recently donating Karen’s fiberglass life-size Arabian horse statue to raise funds for Central Kentucky Riding for Hope, the charitable spirit of serving by sharing is important to the couple.
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Even though the Arabian horse remains central to everything Karen does artistically, she has been greatly influenced by the Bluegrass State’s devotion to Thoroughbreds and its racing tradition. The Kaspers have loved their “old Kentucky home” since they moved there in 1988. In fact, Karen enjoys translating her sculpting mastery from one breed to another. After her first Thoroughbred live study of stakes winner and successful sire Nureyev, she received several commissions, and Karen has sculpted some leading Thoroughbred sires, including A.P. Indy, Kingmambo and Dixieland Band. The personal project on which she is working is a bronze portrait of the great Man o’ War, inspirations for which came from many directions.
Still, staying dedicated to her first passion for the Arabian horse, Karen’s goal as an art advocate is to draw attention to the Arabian in art with its long and glorious tradition—to be recognized as a genre instead of a subset of Orientalism. She has vivid ideas for new works of art reaching beyond her love of portraits. “I hope I live long enough to create some of the unique compositions already in my heart, if I may commission myself,” Karen said.
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Karen's exhibit My Journey with the Arabian Horse, is on display at the International Museum of the Horse at the Kentucky Horse Park, through December 30.