Donna Wilson B. 1965
La Primera
Bronze sculpture
H: 16” L: 16” W: 11”
Estimate - $3,500 - $6,600
Donna Wilson has devoted a lifetime sculpting an authentic lifestyle. A fourth generation rancher on the Cowboy Trail south of Longview, she’s intimately familiar with the entire lifestyle...”the richness, the imagery, the history...” and draws from the natural world around her.
Wilson sculpts in bronze with a passion for making it right. She has been able to draw from a rich cultural heritage to build an extensive body of western art over 20 years, with a focus on one of the most “noble” service animals: “I’ve worked with horses my whole life, ridden professionally and for fun... there just isn’t a more noble beast ever known to mankind. They are just a glorious animal.”
Artist’s note on bronze: “La Primera, or The First” has multiple layers of inspiration. Engraved on the scroll that serves as a base is an inscription that I discovered years ago in a Robert Vavra book. It was a Bedouin legend that said, ”And God took a handful of southerly wind, blew his breath over it and created the horse.”
A number of years ago local legendary, songwriter and performer Ian Tyson wrote a song by the same title, La Primera, about the first Spanish horses to come to the new world. They were descended from ancient Arabian lines. My sculpture depicts the hands of God releasing the first Arabian horse onto the earth.
