Photo by Mary-Austin Klein, 2008

About a week ago, Echo Park painter Mary-Austin Klein (a friend of mine) took this picture of a lone paint mustang -- probably a young male -- in Monitor Valley, north of Belmont, Nevada. This pretty horse is part of a herd that Scott Fajack, Mary's husband, estimates at about 30.

Scott wrote: "Surprisingly, even though we were in Nevada for over two weeks and in more remote places, we saw less wild horses then in 2005. This was the beauty of the herd, off grazing by itself just uphill from the rest."

Here's to the hope that the "others" (the herds Scott and Mary didn't see) haven't been rounded up. As you may know, Bush's Bureau of Land Management proposes to kill many of the mustangs it has penned because it says food for the horses is too expensive. As if guns for Iraq wasn't.

About 15 years ago, I had the good luck to see some herds of mustangs outside of Elko, Nevada. I'll never forget the beauty of a young stallion -- a flamboyant black-and-white paint -- who was following the greater herd. Every now and then he would try to approach the group and the big boss stallion would chase him off. The young paint galloped behind the group, but sometimes he would run off to the side, his neck arched, trotting with his knees high. He stopped to graze at a tolerable distance when the others stopped. Two companions of mine and I watched with binoculars. It was winter, and there was snow on the ground.

In any case, many people in Echo Park know Mary-Austin's work. Her paintings of western mountain ranges and Elysian Park landscapes have sold out at every show I've known her to have. One thing I like about her work is that she reclaims the genre of western ladscape painting as a subject for serious consideration -- after that subject nearly was ruined by all of the corny and sentimental paintings of cowboys and mountain peaks at golden hour.

Disclaimer: My family owns a small M-A Klein painting.