The horses in artist Joyce Lee's paintings are not just accessories to her landscapes. Nor do her landscapes serve as convenient backdrops for her horses.

Under her masterful use of brush and palette knife, she integrates all subject matter with a refined sense of light and composition. Horses are one with the landscape, details of foliage, topography, geological features and sky. Subtle nuances of horse form, color and equipage can harmonize or contrast with their surroundings. This holistic effect is a consequence of having been immersed most of her life in the landscape and the horses as well as setting an artistic standard where both the landscape and the horses have equal importance and impact.

Unlike most modern painters of the West, the artist's roots spring directly out of the very essence of Western landscape and livestock culture. Growing up on remote ranches in Wyoming, she witnessed her cowboy father's seasonal battles with the elements, as well as his small pleasures taken in pride of rugged tasks well done. Joyce herself experienced a childhood of exhilarating moments of horse riding and ranch work interspersed with long periods of quiet solitude -- moments that nurtured the artist in her.

"There was a period of time in my growing up years when my family moved around a lot, from one ranch situation to another. Art was always with me, sometimes set aside for months, but still available," Joyce recalls.

"Horses were a bigger part of my activities for many years, before and during my married life. They were a fairly constant thread. One of the benefits of riding was the opportunity to be out in the environment and soaking up the landscape, all parts of it. A vivid memory I have is of a drizzly morning wrangling horses. I rode out and came back with a memory, strong and simple -- of riding across the soft earth among the green spring grass and the sage, lots of sage. The smell of wet sage over rolling hills under a low, gray sky stays with me. This is just one of many memories from the back of a horse that I know influences how and what I paint today."

Mark Twain opined that the novelist best able to capture the spirit of a country or region is the native writer who has spent at least twenty-five years engaged in "unconscious absorption" of his place and its people. Though primarily a self-educated painter, Joyce's native experiences bring great depth and sophistication to her work. She would have preferred pursuing a traditional academic training, but understood her midlife transformation to full-time artist would require making up for lost time. She has consistently set benchmarks for maturing and evolving her naturalism to the highest standards to supplant academic training.

The opportunity to view works of the Old Masters on her visits to European art museums had a profound impact on her artistic growth. She counts among her influences that Russian painter of evocative impressions of rural landscapes, Isaak Levitan (1860-1900), and the American modernist Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), who painted inhabited desert landscapes and tall skies of the Southwest. Dixon contended that American painting could best work its influence on people when painters based their work upon native material and their native reaction to it. Joyce also credits for inspiration her principal mentor, the esteemed Montana painter Clyde Aspevig.

Joyce took an active role in expediting her evolution as an artist, looking for influences, attending workshops and calling upon Aspevig and other artists for critiques. The rigorous standards of plein air painting accelerated her technical development. "I discovered that you can grow greatly as an artist if you have the courage to seek out people who can help you. That may be difficult for some women artists especially, but it is well worth the effort." She attends weekly life-drawing sessions, viewing them as an essential artistic exercise and opportunity to train her eye. She feels all subjects are valid and painting a still life or a live model only enhances her painting of horses.

Not intimidated by the challenges posed by large paintings, Joyce sees undertaking the expansive canvas as "an important dimension in an artist's growth." She is invigorated by every opportunity to evolve and vary techniques and utensils such as working the paint with palette knives to add relief and surface light. "You just find new dimensions of yourself as an artist, translating the small to medium-size canvases of plein air to large format. The challenge and the freshness makes you more excited about your work."

Joyce captures quiet and serene moments in her landscapes. This quality is even reflected by the horses occupying her spaces. Their stances and movements are natural. There are transparent yet dimensional qualities in their presence and movement. Their arrangement reflects the natural pecking order of herds. "I feel very fortunate that I'm a Western artist who has done more than just visit a ranch to take some photos of cowboys," she notes. "I still feel very connected to my many years of ranch life, ensuring that I bring authenticity to my Western landscapes and representation of the horse."