A Black Horse and a Cowboy with Blue Pants, Yellow Shirt and Big White Hat

A Mud Toy by Navajo artist Elsie Benally, featuring a Navajo cowboy with a big white hat on a black pony, 1980s - 1990s, clay, paint, wool and fabric, 1 ½ x 5 x 4 ¾ inches. This Mud Toy is more roughly hewn and worn than many of the other Elsie Benally pieces we’ve seen, perhaps it’s an early piece; the rider has a very charming smile (and great jewelry), and the pony is all sweet whimsy.

Mud Toys, sunbaked clay figures decorated with paint, fabric scraps, and wool, are an art form revived in the 1980s in Farmington New Mexico, on the edge of the Navajo Reservation. Elsie’s figures often depict animals wrapped in homespun wool, with sweet whimsical faces, or horses or circus animals ridden by Navajos decked out in fine clothing, and sometimes riding double with children or small animals.