About the Artist

Hyn Patty is a sculptor and painter living in mountains of Western North Carolina.  Focused on highly detailed equine sculpture and sculpture finish work, she is also a painter who enjoys plein air and realism in two dimensional media such as oils, pastels, and watercolors.   She is always in pursuit of knowledge of her subjects, their anatomy, studying them intensely and trying to capture their essential character, while expanding her range and skill.  With ceramics in particular she is fascinated with the science and chemistry of the processes.  She often produces her own molds and castings in studio in resin or ceramic media.

"If I can convey the personality of a dog, the expression in that horse's eyes, or capture how glowing the light falls upon a subject so that you can almost smell it, then I feel a piece of my work is successful.  I want it to make you stop in your tracks and look again, to linger as you absorb it's details, and hope you FEEL something in response.  These can be elusive qualities to capture in a work, yet well worth the effort to push myself to try to achieve with every piece I create."

Sculptures are typically cast in limited editions - some of them very small, some in larger numbers.  Working in oil clay over a wire armature, or more recently learning Zbrush to work digitally, a piece may be produced in a variety of media.   Unpainted resin editions are sold unfinished for other artists to paint.  Others of her sculptures are also produced in ceramics.  In the past that would be earthenware in studio, but increasingly will include fine English bone china or porcelain. 

Hyn also finishes a few resins of her own sculptures, or other artist's,  which she paints herself.  These are typically offered at auction, as are her custom order slots to paint or custom glaze other artist's pieces.  Painting or illustration commissions are handled quietly behind the scenes and accepted as time permits.  Through such work Hyn Patty has produced thousands of pieces now cherished in both public and private collections in more than 30 countries of the world.

"It started the summer of 1976 with the purchase of a plastic Breyer toy horse when I was six years old.  I had been collecting various kinds for years.  The model horse came with an issue of 'Just About Horses' that had articles about showing models and customizing them.  I was a kid with scuffed up and even broken ponies I loved to play with for years before that.  That issue of JAH set my mind aflame with the idea of customizing my own model horses!  Both my mother and father helped me.  My mother taught me the basics of how to paint using oils, my father supplied tools and taught me how to use a camera.  By the following summer I opened my art studio and started taking out classified ads in JAH to advertise my model horse painting and animal drawing."

Things grew from there from hobby to business.  Hyn saved up money for art school, worked various Girl Scout horse camps in the mid west and then moved onto spending her summers working with horses on a 10,000 acre ranch in Wyoming.  All that effort and several scholarships later, she went on to the Savannah College of Art & Design for a BFA in Illustration.  Alas, no art schools could be found with majors in sculpting and she wanted to focus on animals so Hyn is entirely self taught in that field, learning mostly from books, her fellow artists, or trial and error. 

Hyn began sculpting her first equines in 1984 in earthenware ceramics, fired at her High School.  She released her first limited edition equine resin, a stock horse gelding called 'Hard to Catch' back in 1994.  Her first limited edition ceramic was a pony foal called 'Wee Bairn' released in 2003.  She went on to win the Realistic Equine Sculpture Society's People's Choice Award and Overall Custom Glaze Championship in 2007.

Hyn also studied a Masters degree at the Savannah College of Art and Design years later for painting.  Then she was awarded a 2 year full ride scholarship to study as a guest artist in the People's Republic of China.  Countless art awards later, fellowships, and grants, she had the misfortune of loosing both of her parents in the same year and finding out that she was suffering from Lyme Disease.  Years later as she was recovering, she was T-boned on her motorcycle.  Such events forced the closure of her art studio for a decade while she struggled to pull her life back together and learn how to walk again.  It wasn't until she was able to relocate to North Carolina that she has been able to slowly reopen her studio and resume her work.

"I didn't know if I still had the hand-eye co-ordination required to do sculpture.  We'd had very difficult financial years and we didn't even have a home of our own for a while.  For lack of space I no longer had an art studio nor the equipment to run it.  Those were dark years and I was even forced to give up my real horses which grieved me most of all.   Much was lost including my art records and client lists."

Thankfully, despite further setbacks, art studio and gallery closings due to COVID over the past few years, Hyn Patty has persevered to return to working in her art studio.  She finally had her first reasonably productive year in 2022 with the casting of her Porthos sculpture in resin and caught up on most of her old custom orders from before her illness and accident.  These days she's back to sculpting, doing custom order client work, has paintings in galleries in Asheville, NC, and is top in her field of equine fine art ceramics custom glazing, producing sculptures in English fine bone china, porcelain, and earthenware.

Formerly known as Paige Easley, then Paige Easley-Patty, her old Hanblechia Studio website is still up and active, now marked as a Google Arts & Culture site.