Kim Penner's life with horses began long before she could have imagined a career as an equine artist. When she was two or three years old, an aunt gave her a card with a horse on it. The image made a lasting impression. Years before greeting cards would carry Kim's own paintings, one small card helped establish the subject that would shape her work.
Kim grew up near Morden, Manitoba, drawing and painting alongside an increasingly determined wish to have horses of her own. When she was ten, her parents bought two colts for $25 each.
The colts gave her an opportunity to learn by watching, handling and growing alongside horses. Their posture, balance, ears, muscle and distance from one another all communicated something. Long before Kim would have described those observations in the language of anatomy or composition, she was learning that every horse moves and responds as an individual.
That knowledge became central to her painting. Equine art can create atmosphere, but accuracy establishes trust—especially with people who know horses. The body has to balance, an expression has to belong to the moment, and every shift of weight has to feel possible.
Learning to see
Art was encouraged at home as well. Kim entered drawings in local fairs and gave more attention to painting during high school. In Winkler, art teacher Marcel Debreuil became an important mentor.
One early drawing, depicting a girl and a horse on masonite, was selected as one of two Manitoba entries sent to a national competition in Toronto. The recognition showed that work made in a small Manitoba community could reach an audience far beyond it.
Kim continued her education at the University of Manitoba, completing a Fine Arts degree in 1990 and later a degree in Education. University exposed her to many approaches to art, but horses, rural life and the Western Canadian landscape remained the subjects to which she returned. They offered movement, structure, personality and a lifetime of visual questions.
After completing Fine Arts, Kim met Glen. Their shared connection with horses became part of the family life and business they built together. On their acreage west of Glenboro, Manitoba, the gallery and studio faced a riding pen. Painting, riding and the daily presence of horses naturally fed one another.
From a rural studio to a wider audience
As Kim committed to painting professionally, exhibitions became an important way to meet the people who understood her subject. The business travelled to events including Agribition, the Calgary Stampede and Spruce Meadows, placing the paintings in front of riders, breeders and collectors who could read a horse's expression and conformation for themselves.
Her work also began travelling in another form. In 2004, Leanin' Tree approached Kim Penner Equine Art about licensing three paintings for greeting cards. The symmetry was striking: a child captivated by a horse card was now seeing her own artwork carried to other people through cards.
That year, Kim Penner Equine Art received the Home Enterprise award within Manitoba's Women Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. It recognized a business that had grown from a rural home through painting, exhibiting, licensing and the less visible work required to build a sustainable studio practice.
A continuing Western Canadian story
Kim's studio is now outside Lacombe, Alberta, but the Manitoba years remain part of the story. Prairie space, working farms, horse events, foothills and mountain country all contribute to the visual language of her paintings. She works from her own reference photographs, drawing on years of observing horses at rest, at work and in motion.
More than three decades into her career, Kim continues to return to the same essential task: look closely enough to understand the individual horse, then paint patiently enough for that character to emerge. Her technique has developed, the studio has changed and the work has reached collectors far beyond Western Canada. The foundation remains remarkably close to where it began.
Two inexpensive colts gave a ten-year-old the chance to know horses from the ground up. A mentor encouraged an emerging artist to take her work seriously. A rural studio became a lasting family business. None of those moments formed a complete career on its own. Together, they established one.
