Restless Wis. horse paints pictures to stay out of trouble

IRON RIDGE, Wis. (AP) — Buggs clenches the wooden handle of a paintbrush in his teeth and stands before an easel. Earlier, the 13-year-old stock-bred horse added broad, gray brushstrokes to a canvas board. Now, with gobs of yellow paint dripping from a narrow brush, he is ready to add a little detail.
 He slowly extends the brush toward the canvas. When he feels it touch, he bobs his head up and down, creating short, swirls of yellow along the bottom of his latest masterpiece.
 Carol Jensen, the proud owner of Buggs, takes the brush from his mouth and replaces it with a treat. She surveys his work and decides to follow up with black.
 Jensen and Buggs have partnered on paintings for about two years. She read about a Florida woman who taught her horse to paint and thought it could be a good way to keep Buggs engaged during the winter. She quickly found that if she didn't occupy Buggs' time he would get into mischief, pulling siding from the barn or harassing her three other horses.
 "Horses need a job to do. Especially this horse, because he's like the really smart, high-energy kid in the classroom. If he's not challenged, he gets into trouble. He gets bored and then starts acting up," Jensen said.
 Buggs appears to enjoy the act of painting – and pleasing people. When Jensen acquired Buggs from a friend about four years ago, that wasn't the case. He was withdrawn and sullen.
 "I think he felt really bad when she gave him up. I think it hurt his feelings. I think he was depressed," Jensen said. "His whole personality changed once I started giving him something to do. Giving him something to occupy his mind really turned him around."
 Using positive reinforcement and repetition, Jensen first taught Buggs how to hold a brush in his mouth. Then, she taught him how to move his head to make brushstrokes on a canvas. Within a month Buggs had completed his first work: a gray background overlaid with patches of mustard yellow. A black design swooping through the middle looks vaguely Asian, while thick traces of vibrant red accent the work.
 "I thought it turned out really well. I like Asian art, and it looks very Asian to me."
 This first painting was on stretched canvas, but Jensen had to switch to canvas boards because Buggs tends to poke the brush through canvases. His work hasn't suffered from the transition; he continues to churn out paintings, some of which sell. One was commissioned by his veterinarian, another by the family of a young horse enthusiast.
 Today, the walls of Jensen's living room are lined with Buggs' original work. She also documents every step of Buggs' painting with photography.
 "I think it's important to have it documented, otherwise people won't believe it," Jensen said.
 Painting aside, Buggs also plays a plastic keyboard, drops a basketball into a 3-foot hoop, gives a wide smile when greeted by visitors, and nods his head up and down when he hears Jensen talking about him.
 With his long blond forelock spilling over wide eyes and a “mustache” speckled with yellow acrylic paint curling beneath the white diamond on the tip of his nose, Buggs fairly bubbles with charisma. Jensen says Buggs has enough personality for two horses.
 But does Buggs have artistic vision?
 "Horses have a hard time seeing at the end of their nose because of their eye position. I don't know what he's seeing,” said Jensen, who thinks the horse may enjoy the activity and its accompanying rewards.
 For her own art, Jensen prefers working in black prints and pastels to recreate the landscape rolling around her 74-acre farmstead, but she still lends her artistic eye to Buggs to create his abstract anomalies. She picks the colors and can rotate the canvas to determine where Buggs' attention is directed.
 Buggs likely won't unseat Jackson Pollock as the king of modern abstract painting anytime soon. But abstract art is defined as expression that is independent of the world's visual references – so perhaps no one is more qualified for it than Buggs.

In this photo taken Feb. 9 is Buggs, the 13-year-old, stock-bred horse trained to paint, in the barn near Iron Ridge, Wis.

In this photo is a painting completed by Buggs, a 13-year-old, stock-bred horse owned by Carol Jensen of Iron Ridge, Wis.