Veryl Goodnight (American, b. 1947). Passing Times, 2000. Bronze with green and reddish-brown patinas. 15-1/2 inches (39...

A Colorado native, Goodnight has completed over 200 sculptures and 20 life-size or larger monuments, all of which reflect her Western roots. She is best-known for her famous monument to freedom entitled The Day the Wall Came Down, featuring five horses jumping over the rubble of the Berlin Wall, located at the George Bush Presidential Library and the Allied Museum in Berlin (as a gift from the U.S.). Goodnight notes "I put a lot of heart and soul into my work. I work from life first and second, I work from my heart. I'm not into doing something commercial. I have to feel it to do it." Her sensitivity to the relationship between women and animals is profound in her work. Goodnight regards animals as co-partners in Western settlement and many of her sculptures suggest a symbiosis between animals and women, both of whom often shared day-to-day existence and work. Goodnight states "I'm interested in women who are close to the animals and the land. I focus on the 1800's because animals were so integral to daily life." Her Women of the West series, which she started in 1984 with a gentle depiction of a pioneer woman reaching out to a fawn, portrays compassion, vulnerability, and the unity between humans and animals.