About the Artist

Anyone familiar with model horses has heard the name Kathleen Moody. Her story sounds like so many of ours as her love for model horses was discovered as a child. The model horse infection started when she was put on the back of a huge gelding at the age of four, and by the time she was nine had spread into a collection of some 200 models. But then around teen hood, she was pressured by friends and family to get rid of the “toys” and “grow up”. 

 

Fast forward through schooling, real horses and various jobs- including a stint at the Walt Disney Studios, Kathleen met her soulmate and moved to Arizona, where she rediscovered model horses in the early 1980's. She had saved and unpacked some seven favorite childhood models that were the beginning of a newer, bigger collection.  In a longing for those sweet childhood days, Kathleen looked up the local model people and started doing shows and reworking. But when she came to a show with her own original sculpture, Simply Splendid (pictured below), everything changed.  The rest is history.

 

Over the years this prolific artist has created hundreds of models for not only Breyer/Reeves International, but Hartland Collectables, DaBar Enterprizes, Safari, and The Trail of Painted Ponies. One of her signature victories was the breaking of the “three feet on the ground” rule that most figurine companies follow.  Faced with a portrait of a horse with a very high trot, she engineered a carefully balanced model with only two feet on the ground using a minimal “disc” base.  Huckleberry Bey is still produced and celebrated today, along with many other similar innovative horses. How to tell a Moody horse? Look for wild action and lots of HAIR!

 

Even today, some forty-one years later, Kathleen can’t keep her hands still and continues to create fun and fascinating models that are now produced in resin.

 

Kathleen's resin line is now cast exclusively by Omar & Karen Maggard at Bluegrass Resin Casting Studio in Winchester, Kentucky.