Night Gallery is pleased to present Happy Trails, an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Sarah Miska. This is Miska’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, following Swept and High Stakes.

Miska’s work investigates control and communication through equestrian motifs. Known primarily for paintings concerned with English riding and its inherent restraint, the artist turns this time to the American West. Last fall, Miska spent six weeks  painting in a converted horse stable in Wyoming. From the barn, she had a clear view of the ranch’s rolling meadows and red sandstone cliffs, the scent of grass and manure further sealing her immersion in the landscape. 

During this, Miska interviewed horse wranglers and the ranch’s apprentices, building friendships while learning what it takes to steward rough land through harsh weather. In the West, horses are working tools, bred and trained to herd cattle across terrain that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving. Miska has long been interested in the communication between horse and rider, a bond she regards as singular in its intimacy. There are many ways to break, or train, a horse; her sympathies lie with the kinder methods.

The paintings in Happy Trails draw primarily from photographs Miska took during this time in Wyoming. The sun shines golden on a cow’s ear before an uncomfortable procedure. A white-blonde mane falls across a horse’s cautious brown eye. As in her earlier work, Miska attends closely to the attire of riders—here, tight Wranglers, western button-ups, and bolo ties, in place of the tailored jackets and riding breeches of English riders. Where the latter reads as uptight, the former reads as sexy, and in tight crops Miska zeroes in on that particular western allure. Ranches are dirty and demand hard labor; both disciplines of equestrianism are expensive to maintain, but where English riding might find its sponsors in Hermès and Gucci, western riding answers instead to Pabst Blue Ribbon and Ford.

While Western and equestrian painting take part in a longstanding artistic vernacular, such works are often relegated to the periphery of the world of “fine art.” Miska pushes against dismissive categorization by painting with relentless diligence. Rendering each strand of hair in meticulous brushstrokes, the artist’s adroit hand rewards looking. The paintings are meandering, rich in color and texture. Miska’s early training in sculpture lends a deft understanding of space and physicality to the work. This painstaking attention gives each canvas a voyeuristic edge, conjuring the sensation of standing close enough to a person or a horse to register the nanoscopic intricacies of their appearance. Miska’s close observation of horses, their movements, smells, and sounds, sharpens her ability to render the nuance of their forms; horse and rider appear not as themselves, but as crystallized renderings of their culture’s aesthetics. Throughout Happy Trails, Miska examines the rituals of outward presentation with the assiduity of a magnifying glass, finding in the West’s working dress and rough terrain a different kind of self-possession—one earned through grit rather than restraint.