The wild mustangs, and, the rugged and picturesque Tularosa Basin, have been my artistic muses for most of my life. Most of the horses are gone now, having been rounded up and moved off the Missle Range and the National Parks and public lands. Now scattered far and wide, by relocation and BLM adoptions, the rugged and beautiful mustangs of the Tularosa Basin, as most of the wild mustangs in America are fated to be, have been effectively exterminated and will soon be lost forever. This painting is a study of a mustang mare from the Tularosa Basin area of south-central New Mexico. The mare is typical of the horses that used to roam the area for hundreds of years. First arriving in America as livestock shipped to the New World by the Spanish Conquistadors, Barb and Andalusian horses were moved northward from the Gulf of Mexico to settlements in Las Cruces and Santa Fe along the Rio Grande river. Many horses did not complete the journey as the herds were frequently raided by the native tribes, and some horses even managed to escape to start the wild herds. These wild herds thrived in the harsh dry environment whereever permanent water could be found along the foothills of the bordering Sacramento and San Andreas mountain ranges. Over generations, with the addition of more spanish and indian horses, and, the introduction of english horses lost to the wild from the ranchers and homesteaders, the mustangs developed into a tough, distinctive breed of horses. For my model for this painting, I used my childhood horse, Dusty, a 4yr. old, dark buckskin/dun mustang mare. She was a sweet-natured and willing mare that came to us as a greenbroke 2yr old filly with a freckled yellow face. As she grew, she lost the freckles, and, darkened to a chocolate over gold with beautiful big golden dapples in her silky hair coat. To my knowledge, Dusty was born and raised in captivity in Tularosa, NM, until we bought her as a two year old, but, her dam and sire came from the wild herds of mustangs that inhabit the semi-arrid scrublands west of Tularosa. This area runs from Alamogordo to the south, to Tularosa, and north to Carrizozo, then west to the San Andreas covering the vast White Sands Missle Range. In this painting, I am showing my mustang mare about midway across the basin with the San Andreas mountains behind her, and the solitary peak known as Tule Peak, a popular riding destination of the horse-owning military families on the nearby Holloman AFB. Behind Tule Peak, a line of pure white sand dunes of White Sands National Monument stretches for miles, nestled against the mountain foothills.