Mal Luber – A Different Perspective - Winter 2007 Issue of Horses in Art Magazine

Mal Luber – A Different Perspective

by Sarah H. Crampton

Three Ponies — Color pencil, 30 x 22, by Mal Luber.
Depicting an incredible wide array of subjects, Mal Luber’s artwork, like the lens of a camera, zooms in on his subject to create a compelling image. He often interestingly crops his subject quite tightly, creating an enigmatic summation of the scene, leaving the viewer to fantasize about the larger context.

Working in graphite, colored pencil and acrylic paint, he has fairly recently turned his focus to wildlife art and equine art. Luber explains, “I have always been drawn to horses, despite the fact that the only horses I’d seen as a child were pulling carts through the streets of Brooklyn, New York. Yet, drawing horses as a child, or more accurately profiles of a horse’s head, was one subject in which I was always fascinated. As I grew older, and matured as an artist, other subjects began to interest me more. I loved to photograph people in the streets, bathed in bright sunlight, and from those photographs I created large graphite drawings. But if life is a circle, so art must reflect life, and eventually, I returned to using animals as my prime subject matter, and particularly horses.”

“I try to be as realistic as possible,” Luber continues, “but every artist has a style, which must emerge through the creative process. My drawings tend to be more photorealistic than my paintings because the graphite medium allows more of the quality of a black and white photo to be portrayed, while the acrylic paint lends itself to a more impressionistic quality.”

Mal Luber attempts to look at his subject matter in a way that provides a different perspective. For example, his painting Guarding the Queen of his new Look Who Dropped In series, places both wild and domestic animals in a domestic environment. It is Luber’s way of looking at wildlife and pet art in an entirely different and unique way. He will be doing the same with equine subjects in the near future. “Although I still do not own a horse, and seldom ride anymore, I am still enthralled with the elegance, grace and power of horses,” Luber remarks. “A horse has a certain grace and majesty that is not found in many animals.”

In the introduction to a book Mal Luber hopes to publish in the near future titled Drawn to Horses, he includes this quote:

“I on my horse, and Love on me, doth try
Our horsemanships, while by
strange work I prove
A horseman to my horse, a horse to Love.”
— Sonnets, Sir Philip Sidney

View a large selection of equine artwork at Mal Luber’s web site: www.malluber.com

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