Juliet R. Harrison: A Gallery of Dreams

“I want my images intimate; to be about what a horseperson sees and feels when working with their horse—not standing back, but right up close,” says Juliet R. Harrison, who opened Equis Art Gallery in 2013 in Red Hook, N.Y., just four months after her last treatment for stage 3 ovarian cancer.

Horsey Background

Riding forward is all she’s known since she was 10 years old, when a strawberry roan Welsh Mountain Pony named Ginger was “hers” for two riding camp summers at Glen Durham Stables in upstate New York.

“It was a traditional Pony Club program where we learned everything,” says Harrison. “They took us to local shows in Ulster and Greene counties.”

At the Vershire Riding Camp in Vermont, she picked up the basics of eventing before a summer on Long Island at the Thomas School of Horsemanship.

“I came off during an in-and-out combination where my horse jumped the first fence, then put the brakes on, and his bridle and I ended up on the far side of the second,” she recalls. “He was named Romeo but was no love of mine!”

Photography and Horses

By her 40s, her greatest love—her son—led her back to horses after years spent adulting to earn an MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She built a work portfolio in retail and administration.

“After offering riding lessons to my 5-year-old, who liked them well enough, I realized it was me who wanted to ride,” she reflects. After three years of weekly group lessons, Harrison bought her first horse, Tony. “I had him for 14 years. He was my first horse and my last.”

The Belgian/Quarter Horse gelding was reminiscent of the “amazing” drafts she saw competing in Michigan while studying for her MFA.

“I’d never been able to draw or paint, but I had a camera in my hand since I was a child,” Harrison recalls. “My first ‘real’ equine photos were at that venue. But my immersion into horse ownership inspired me to turn my camera on the world I was part of.

“I shot unlike what most photographers were doing. I got closer to the bodies, cropping and orienting my subjects to focus on light, texture, contrast, and massing. I wasn’t ‘taking pretty pictures of pretty horses.’”

She found others who understood what she was trying to do, pre-Facebook, on a forum called the Equine Art Guild.

“There were thousands of us,” she remembers. “We held online group shows, entered juried shows, networked and supported one another. I was asked first to jury and then direct an online equine art competition called Ex Arte Equinus.”

That led to meeting more horse-focused artists, and by 2009, she was part of a Red Hook, N.Y., art collective.

“We rented a space with a storefront gallery and smaller rooms in the back that we offered as studio spaces.”

Diagnosis & Gallery Beginnings

She was renting one of those spaces for her own work when she got the diagnosis: stage 3 ovarian cancer.

“Between surgery and chemo, I was unable to get out and photograph, and was spooked about going back in the darkroom to do my own printing,” says Harrison. “When I was done with treatment and in remission, the studio space came up for renewal. I had to decide, was I going to give it up?”

The answer came from the artist friends she gathered with each year during Saratoga Race Course’s Thoroughbred racing meet, held during the summer in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Among them was Canadian artist Linda Shantz.

“Linda had gallery representation in Saratoga, so she would drop off work when we met up, and I would pick it up for her at the end of the season and hold on to it for the bulk of the year until she needed to trade something out,” says Harrison.

“I asked if I could show her art in my studio and try to sell it. I’d been selling my own, so I knew how to market it. Linda agreed and I sold one [of her pieces] almost immediately. That was the genesis of Equis Art Gallery. If I couldn’t create enough of my work to sell, I could try to sell work by others.”

She asked her Equine Art Guild/Saratoga friends if they would send her their artwork to sell.

“And they did! I still represent many of them today, including Linda.”

Giving Back Joy

Harrison’s last cancer treatment was in August of 2013, putting her in remission for the last 11 years. She opened Equis Art Gallery in January of 2014, and it now has an international collector base and represents over 30 artists from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the Ukraine.

“Inviting [Ukrainian artist] Kateryna Beilikova was in discussion when war came,” she says. “I’m honored to have her work and amazed that she continues to create and get it out of the country to me, via Poland usually. I am lucky to know her and her work.

“Equis Gallery was my gift to myself. After surviving cancer, I asked myself what could give me joy and let me give back to those I care about. Two communities took care of me when things were at their worst, my equine artists and my Red Hook, so if I can bring support to them, I am thrilled.”

Equis Art Gallery has been called the only gallery of its kind.

“[Operating] an art gallery is not an easy business, and every sale means a lot, but one of my favorite stories is of a couple one summer who bought several pieces,” she recalls. “I was so excited I looked them up, and she turned out to be the curator of a famous museum gallery in New York City. Knowing that she found art in Equis worth owning meant a lot.”

This cancer warrior believes in giving a leg up to artists who don’t always find representation and introducing them to collectors who may appreciate their work and want to own it; collectors who want their art like they want their horses—right up close.

This article about Juliet R. Harrison appeared in the June 2024 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!