Deborah Butterfield

Deborah Butterfield is an American sculptor who is best known for her horse sculptures made out of various natural and found materials. Butterfield was born on the date of the 75th Kentucky Derby, which she credits as a partial influence on her subject matter. She earned her BA and MFA at the University of California Davis, where she studied under her mentor, Manuel Neri. In addition to Neri, she also studied with William Wiley, Roy De Forest and Robert Arneson. 

Butterfield has been presented with many different awards such as National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, an American Academy of Achievement Award, and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.Her work remains in many different public institutions such as the Denver Art Museum, Denver; H.M. de Young Museum, San Francisco; Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Meijer Sculpture Gardens in Grand Rapids, MI; The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Walker Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis, Yale University in New Haven, CT.