Kimry Jelen equestrian art coming to the library

All during the months of November and December, Kimry Jelen's equestrian art will be on display in the Sisters Library.

If ever there was a labor of love, this is it.

When Kimry was 5 years old the urge to put horse images on paper hit her, and she picked up one of her grandmother's sable art brushes and got right into it. The problem was, she was bent on destroying the brush, jabbing and mashing it into the paint.

Grandma didn't go into a tizzy and shout, "Lay that brush down, child!" It was just the opposite, she gently began to teach Kimry the proper way to use a brush by running it back and forth over the paint, then applying it properly to transfer her thoughts and images of horses to paper.

"Kimry was hooked on horses from the day she was born," her mom says. That may have been because there was an Arabian breeding farm right next door to where she lived in Albany, Oregon.

"One day, when I was 6 years old, one of the beautiful Arabians invited me to go for a ride on him," Kimry recalled. "He came over to the fence between our places and stood there sideways, inviting me to climb the fence and sit on his back. When I was up, he took me all around his paddock, showing me everything, then walked back to the fence and waited for me to get off - and that's when the adults came on a run."

Kimry's dad asked her if she had been riding the Arabian, but she lied to him and said no. What she didn't know is they he saw her on the horse and the fence was newly painted, white. The white paint was on her clothing, and there was white paint on the back of the horse.

Kimry's been fixed on horses ever since.

"I took some art classes in Portland," she recalled, "learning different techniques, and every time I'd paint the hips or flowing forms of one of the models, the shapes would slowly morph into a horse."

Even though, with the help of her grandmother, Kimry started out in watercolors, by the time she was 10 she had moved into acrylics, and has been in that medium ever since.

Jelen's style flows between abstract and representational, perhaps the reason she's been invited to show her work at the 2014 FEI World Equestrian Games in Normandy, scheduled to be held from August 23 to September 7, 2014.

This will be the seventh edition of the games, which are held every four years and run by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI). The Games are the first qualifying event for the 2016 Summer Olympics for all team events in the dressage, eventing, and jumping disciplines.

Jelen hopes to be able to accept the invitation and attend the event. To help cover the cost, she has put together a calendar with 13 images of her horse paintings, many of which will be on display at the library exhibit.

Visitors can purchase one (or more) of her calendars to help ensure that Sisters Country will be personally represented in Normandy, France, next year.