National Cowgirl Museum presents No Turning Back: The Art of Veryl Goodnight, which will feature 17 sculptures and 11 paintings that focus on Western women, horses, and wildlife. This is a different kind of exhibit for Goodnight than her previous exhibition as it will include both sculpture and paintings together, and shows a broad array of her work.
Goodnight’s career started as a wildlife painter in the early 1970s. She began sculpting to educate herself about anatomy. Sculpture then dominated her career throughout the late 1990s while in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her move back to Colorado in 2006 intensified her desire to return to oil painting.
Goodnight has completed over 200 sculptures and 20 life-size or larger monuments to date. All of the works have reflected her Western roots. The most notable is The Day the Wall Came Down, a seven ton bronze sculpture consisting of five larger than life-size horses jumping over the fallen Berlin Wall. The United States Air Force delivered this monument to Berlin, Germany, in 1998. A sister casting is installed at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas.