Mustangs Wild — Original Watercolor

 Mustangs Wild

Before I moved to Hawaiʻi, I was already dreaming about what I hoped to paint here — whales, honu, tropical water, and the life I wanted to someday experience firsthand.

But I’ve never wanted to paint something simply because I have a photograph of it.

I want to spend time with what I paint. I want to paint from experience — and with experience.

I want to watch my subjects movement, understand something of its personality, and feel the energy it carries before I try to translate it into art.

So while I was still living in the Lake Tahoe area, I asked myself a simple question:

What magnificent wild animals are here with me now?

The answer was Mustangs!

 

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In the Beginning, There Were Horses

Horses had been part of my life long before this painting.

As a kid, I loved them enough to work for free at a local horse stable, and they were among the very first animals I learned to draw and paint. I believe a horse and a parrot were my first two animal subjects.

Years later, while preparing for a completely different chapter of my life, I found myself returning to them.

I was drawn to spend time around the wild and free-roaming horses in the Washoe Valley and Virginia Range areas east of Lake Tahoe. I loved watching them and getting to know the individual horses within the different herds.

Two of them I could already envision in my future painting.

The paint mare came from the Virginia Range. She was beautifully marked, calm, and gentle in her presence.

The dark stallion came from a herd I spent time with in and around Washoe Valley / Lake.

He was something else entirely.

Strong. Alert. Fiercely protective of his herd.

And very aware of everything happening around him.

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A Moment I Never Photographed

One evening I arrived near the wetlands at the south end of Washoe Lake around sunset.

I had only just gotten there and hadn’t even prepared my camera when the horses came running in.

The stallion entered the shallow water, backlit by the setting sun, whinnying and pawing at the water while his mares gathered behind him.

It lasted only a moment. - I never got the photograph, but it was a beautiful gift to witness!

I remember thinking immediately:

I need to paint this majestic horse.

Mustangs Wild became my way of sharing something of what I saw — and what I felt — in this horse’s mana.

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Two Horses, One Landscape

The two horses in this painting came from different encounters and different herds.

I brought them together within a landscape inspired by the high-desert country east of Lake Tahoe, where open sage-covered terrain rises toward the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

I composed the foreground for the painting rather than copying one specific location, allowing me to build the environment around the personalities of the horses.

The spotted paint mare stands slightly behind him.

The stallion watches.

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Three Colors at the Base — Many Layers to Build Life

The painting began in a way that looks almost nothing like the finished watercolor.

For the first layers, I simply started with three primary colors:

magenta, phthalo blue green shade, and lemon yellow.

Those first washes looked so funny — almost like tie-dye — before I gradually layered darker pigments over them.

Rather than painting a black horse with black pigment from the beginning, the deeper color developed through transparent layers.

Traces of those earlier colors still glow beneath and within the finished horse, giving his dark coat subtle shifts of cool and warm undertones when viewed closely.

The same layering process continued through the mountains, desert vegetation, rocks, and expansive sky until the entire scene slowly emerged from those first transparent washes.

And thankfully, the tie-dye horse eventually became a wild and respectable mustang stallion. 😆

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A Little Kauaʻi Hidden in the Art

There is one small detail in Mustangs Wild that tells another part of the story.

Look closely at the white star on the stallion’s forehead.

Its shape is the island of Kauaʻi.

At the time I painted this, Kauaʻi was very much on my mind.

So while I was painting this wild horse from the Sierra Nevada landscape, my heart was still longing for the island I was dreaming about.

My fearless stallion carries that dream of Kauaʻi on his forehead — secretly...

or maybe not so secretly. 😉

Years later, I now live and make my life as an artist on Kauaʻi.

That little mark makes Mustangs Wild feel, to me, like a painting created somewhere between two chapters:

honoring where I was while already dreaming about where I was going.

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Artwork Details

Title: Mustangs Wild
Artist: Christie Marie Elder
Created: 2016
Medium: Original Watercolor
Artwork Dimensions: 20" H × 30" W
Framed Dimensions: 35" H × 40¼" W × 1" D
Price: $15,000
Original: One of One

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Framing

Mustangs Wild is professionally presented in a simple glossy black frame with dark gray matting and Plexiglas glazing.

The deep neutral presentation keeps the focus on the watercolor itself while giving the luminous sky, distant mountain range, and warm high-desert landscape a clean contemporary border.

Framed dimensions: 35" H × 40¼" W × 1" D.
Professionally framed and ready to hang.

Artist Signature & Documentation

Signature: Signed by Christie Marie Elder on the front.

Each original artwork includes a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) together with an artist biography for provenance and collector records.

Copyright

© Christie Marie Elder. All rights reserved.

Purchase of the original artwork transfers ownership of the physical artwork only. Copyright and reproduction rights remain with the artist and do not transfer with the sale.

Shipping & Delivery

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