Since the age of four, Sherry Rohl loved to draw horses, but moved away from them when she studied art at the College of Design, Art and Architecture at the University of Cincinnati. For the past 10 years Rohl has returned to her first love and has concentrated on creating equine paintings, drawings and monotypes. This exhibit presents her most recent work.

Rohl’s passion for and sensitivity to her subject and exceptional drafting ability enable her to express the power and strength of stallions on the run and the tenderness and vulnerability of an expectant mare at rest. Rohl is able to capture the anatomical correctness of each horse, as well as its individual personality and essence – no easy task. More like portraits, Rohl’s horses look straight at us and meet us eye to eye. Most striking is her unexpected composition that gives these works an unusual feel and attitude, compelling us to realize these are not your usual horse pictures.

Rohl shuns any romantic or sentimental notions about her horses. If anything, she views her work as autobiographically existential - more a reflection of a phase in her life than about her directly. “I’ve recently became a grandmother and find myself drawing colts. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Rohl says. She continues to ask herself “why horses,” which seems part of her creative process and fortunately for us produces work of this magnitude.

In 2007 Rohl received Best in Show at EquiFest, an exhibit of international horse artists and was selected in 2008 as the featured artist at the Deland Museum’s Equine Event in Deland, Florida. Rohl, who lives and works in Fort Myers, Florida and Woodstock, New York, creates work that is prized by horse and art lovers alike.