The Verve: Love of horses inspires Randi Evans
Randi Evans is an artist who visually shares the things that sustained her through her childhood.
She found solace the first time she picked up a pencil, and the first time she was lifted onto the back of a horse. To this day, one passion feeds the other. If she couldn’t find a piece of paper to draw on, she would draw on the walls of her closet, mastering the lines of every muscle and strand of mane of the horses she loved.
“I paint what I like. And, primarily, what I love is horses,” she said, “It’s their motion, their action, and their drama that I want to capture.”
Evans was born and raised in Los Angeles. She took every available art class in high school. She eventually enrolled at Valley College in North Hollywood with the intention of graduating with a degree in art. Instead she decided to marry the “boy next door” and have children.
Still, she painted. To her, making art is meditative and therapeutic. “It is my recreation,” she said.
Living in the California desert, Evans’ husband, Al, bought her first horse. She began raising Arabian horses and hosting and participating in endurance races. In 2001, a fall down a flight of stairs caused major injury and she had to give up riding.
In 2005, she and her husband moved to Oakesdale, Wash., 50 miles south of Spokane, to be near their son and his four children.
Now, Evans does ministry work, paints and takes the occasional art class or workshop. Her current medium of choice is oil on canvas and, when she needs a break from that, watercolor on synthetic paper. “Working with watercolors helps me loosen up a bit,” she said.
Her oil paintings are ethereal yet realistic studies of horses, filled with movement and grace. Her other works include lush landscapes, whimsical animals, and abstracts bursting with texture and color. She also captures the tranquility of the beaches and lighthouses on Cape Cod, where her daughter lives.
Evans has shown her work at the Lancaster Art Museum in California, at Forza Coffee on the South Hill, and at the last Town and Country Studio Tour. She is a member of the River Ridge Fine Art Society. Currently, she has work at the Angel Gallery in Coeur d’Alene and Inspired Creations, a new gallery and locally made gifts shop at 523 S. Pines Road in Spokane Valley. On Nov. 24, she will be participating in the Slightly West of Spokane Artists Studio Tour.
Still recovering from her fall, Evans finds solace in the things she paints as well as in the simple act of painting.
“Everybody has ‘their thing’ that they engage in to relax. Mine is losing myself in a world of paint where nothing else exists including the opinions and judgments of others. In the world of art, I am free.”