John Saunders: Where Wild Horses Meet Memory

By Brian D’Ambrosio

The wild horses of Placitas do not need an introduction to John Saunders. They know the way.

They wander near his home in the high desert, sometimes approaching close enough to eat apples and carrots from his hand. They are cautious but curious, animals shaped by instinct and survival, yet willing to accept a moment of care.

“They come up and eat the apples,” Saunders says. “They eat the carrots. They trust you. It’s cool.”

For Saunders, the horse has never been merely a subject. It is a presence — a companion, a memory, a symbol of movement and autonomy that has followed him throughout his life. His paintings of horses, particularly those emerging through fog, carry the atmosphere of something half-remembered: animals appearing through mist, shapes forming from uncertainty, echoes of another time.

“Horses tell a story,” he says. “They have a pecking order. I love painted horses in fog. They have a pretty neat look to it.”

That fascination began long before he became known as an artist. It was rooted in childhood landscapes, family history, and the rhythms of the American West.

Born in New Mexico, Saunders spent nearly a decade in California before returning home. His family’s connection to the Southwest stretches back generations. His grandfather came to New Mexico after World War II and worked at Sandia Labs, where he developed friendships with figures from the Western art world, including cowboy artist George Marks. A painter himself, Saunders’ grandfather helped pass along an appreciation for the landscape, animals, and visual storytelling that would eventually shape his grandson’s life.

The influence was not simply artistic. It was cultural — a connection to a place where landscapes, animals, and human stories have always been intertwined.

Saunders’ father also carried a creative spirit. He once traveled to Hollywood hoping to become an actor, earning small roles but never finding the major breakthrough he sought. He later became part of the Albuquerque community, occasionally appearing as an extra in films and local productions.

Years later, Saunders watched a television segment about Route 66 and saw an unexpected piece of family history appear on screen.

“There was my dad chasing after a crook,” he recalls. “It was my dad. It freaked me out.”

The past, like many of Saunders’ paintings, sometimes emerges unexpectedly.

Before dedicating himself fully to painting, Saunders explored nearly every form of artistic expression imaginable. He studied cartooning in Chicago, receiving the inevitable stack of rejection letters that comes with pursuing a competitive field. He worked in jewelry, creating fetish necklaces and small animal designs. He carved wood, made sculptures, created bronzes, and experimented with paper sculpture.

“I was a jack of all trades here,” he says. “Oil and watercolor and acrylic. I used to be a sculptor. Wood carving, yeah.”

His early dedication to craft reflected another era of making things by hand. Saunders remembers carrying carving tools to junior high school in Los Lunas and working with materials directly, before digital tools transformed the creative world.

A childhood experience helped convince him that art might be more than a hobby. When Saunders was a teenager, his mother entered one of his watercolors into the adult division of the state fair. He won a blue ribbon, an early recognition that perhaps he had found his calling.

“I was kind of like, well, I guess this is interesting. Maybe I should pursue this,” he says.

Through all the experimentation and changes in medium, watercolor kept calling him back.

“It is hard for me to analyze what makes a painting,” Saunders says. “I seem to always return to watercolor. I’m real good at it, been doing it too long, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Watercolor suits his vision of horses because it allows uncertainty and movement. The paint can bleed, fade, and dissolve, much like memory itself. A horse can become more than an animal; it can become a feeling, a fleeting image glimpsed through weather and time.

His fog paintings carry traces of his youth. Saunders remembers his father riding horses through pastures and recalls seeing wild horses near the ocean when the family lived in Laguna Beach, California. Those memories — coastal air, open spaces, and the quiet strength of animals — continue to surface in his work.

“Sometimes a painting fights you,” he says. “And then you come back a couple of days later and it’ll come around.”

That patience is central to Saunders’ approach. A painting, like a horse, cannot always be forced. It requires attention, respect, and an understanding of when to move forward and when to wait.

Today, surrounded by the desert landscape of Placitas, Saunders remains connected to the creatures that have shaped his imagination. The wild horses outside his door are not symbols from a distant past. They are living reminders of endurance, independence, and beauty.

They move through the landscape carrying their own stories — stories of survival, instinct, and freedom. Saunders has spent a lifetime translating those stories onto paper and canvas, capturing not only the appearance of the horse but the mystery surrounding it: the unobtrusive moments before movement, the shapes dissolving through mist, the memories that refuse to disappear.

For John Saunders, every horse is more than a theme. It is a connection to family, landscape, and a lifetime spent searching for the place where art and memory meet.

Brian D'Ambrosio is the author of New Mexico Eccentrics.