An Artist with a Horse

Noah Eckstein
4 min readJun 8, 2022

HUDSON — Sally Eckhoff has a mystical, sacred relationship with her horse Spot. So much so that Eckhoff’s friends worry what she will do when the 27-year-old, one-eyed, 1,150 pound half-Morgan half-Pinto eventually passes away.

“I have an actual relationship with an animal that’s like the kind of relationship that most people have with other people,” Eckhoff said. “There’s a lot of risk involved in being in love with anything or anybody. And, you know, my horse is somebody that I need to protect now that he’s old.”

Spot and Sally Eckhoff at the Samascott Orchards in Kinderhook, NY. Photo by Dona Ann McAdams

Eckhoff, 67, is a painter and writer from Long Island, residing in Stuyvesant Falls. Her paintings are on display until June 13 at Time & Space Limited, an unconventional gallery space for an unconventional artist. Eckhoff’s art centers on a kindred relationship with Spot, using the horse to represent struggles of the body, the depredations of age, and their shared craving for adventure.The assemblage of paintings were created in the past three to four years and is aptly titled “Spot and Me”.

“My paintings are nature paintings, and they’re also about animals and people, but not in the usual way,” Eckhoff said.

She’s been a horse rider all her life and started roaming into the East Village in 1976 and eventually moved there in 1977. When she first spotted Spot twenty years ago working as a horse trainer, she knew they…

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Noah Eckstein

I’m a journalist covering culture, politics, and people.