Drive my car
The “Horsepower” exhibit at the Firehouse Art Center in Norman explores more than one way to travel.
NORMAN — If you love horses or vintage cars — and who doesn’t? — you should find a lot to relate to in a show at Firehouse Art Center, 444 S Flood, in Norman.
The “Horsepower” exhibit, by Dusty Gilpin and Kristin Vails, is the first show together by the husband-wife Oklahoma City artists.
A former director of the Plaza District Association, Vails said the horses in her acrylic and latex canvases “each represent a woman … in the Bible.”
Horses, usually doing something, are rendered realistically but emerge “through layers of paint” from the sketchy, nearly empty spaces around them.
In Vails’ “Achsah,” for example, the nose and lower legs of a palomino are partly submerged in the floating body of water from which it is drinking.
A splotched brown and white horse named “Esther” runs through a glob of dripping, dark blue waters, its head haloed by a bit of starry night sky.
“Jael” seems to be charging us, one leg raised menacingly, while seashells and wheat garland the heads of Vails’ “Lydia” and “Ruth.”
Meeting our eyes steadily, lined up on a dripping horizon, are five equine “Daughters of Zelophehad,” a Bible father whose female offspring had to defend their inheritance.
Most heroic of all is Vails’ “Rebekah,” a muscular, partially rendered horse, plunging forward from a blotchy background of gray and dripping peach-pink areas.
A third-generation Oklahoman, from a family of “car enthusiasts,” Gilpin’s acrylicspray paint canvases blend influences “from graffiti to graphic design and sign painting.”
The front wheels of the oldest auto he depicts, an orangehued “1929 Ford Model T,” seem to rise off the ground to meet us.
Rust suggests antiquity and gives visual edge to his wellhandled paintings of a “1949 Ford F2” truck and of a green “1949 Oldsmobile,” angling across the picture plane.
Other well-rendered classic cars include a red “1979 Chevy Luv” truck, a dripping “1970 Plymouth Barricuda” in front of sky blue, and a “1951 Chevy Coupe” with a chrome grille.
The exhibit is highly recommended in its run through Oct. 20, with a reception planned from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Oct. 19.