62 WWW.SOUTHWESTART.COM • AUGUST 2019
Seeing Red, oil, 11 x 14.
creative process. “But sometimes it’s a
factor in adding to the title and the line
of thought I would like to take the view-
er along,” she says. “The title of MIND
YOUR OWN BUSINESS is directed more
toward the attitude of the cowboy than
the horse.”
GUTTING WAS born in 1990 in the
Arizona desert and grew up in a small
northern Idaho town. One of the fi rst
things to know about her childhood is
that the family did not own a television
set, a choice her parents made early in
their marriage. Instead, Gutting recalls,
her parents read out loud to her and her
brother in the afternoons and evenings.
“Our way of life was a vibrant environ-
ment for the imagination,” she says. “Liv-
ing without the infl uence of television at
a young age served to stimulate my mind
and a creative way of thinking that has
carried into every area of my life.”
As she grew older, her parents re-
tired the elementary school fare to the
bookshelf, replacing it with, among
other things, novels by Zane Grey, such
as Forlorn River and The Call of the Can-
yon. Grey (1872-1939) had a knack for
spinning a good yarn and creating a
vivid picture of the western frontier.
In fact, the author is given substantial
credit for helping to shape the roman-
tic myths of the old West through his
books and the fi lms based on them.
Grey also contributed to Gutting’s af-
fection for the western way of life. “Theimages from the books are still with
me,” she says. “A story has power. An
illustration can move you in a way that
nothing else can. That’s the fuel for my
career as a painter.”
Gutting and her brother were home-
schooled. Their mother, Susan Gutting,
had earned a teaching degree and had
studied at the American Academy of Art
in Chicago. When Gutting was just 4
years old, her mom made room for her
in the studio space where she painted
landscapes. “That way I could slip in
and draw with her in the afternoons,”
Abigail says, adding, “She also let my
brother and I take jars of paint and dec-
orate the doghouse in the backyard.”
As a child, Gutting drew constantly,
often animals. And once she even drew