William Schaaf has never treated art as decoration. For him, it’s a process—of making, remembering, and healing. Now 80, he’s still in his studio, still forming horses from bronze, canvas, and clay with the same intent that’s guided him for over sixty years. Horses are his subject, yes, but they’re also a kind of language. They carry memory, power, and spirit. Schaaf’s relationship with the equine form is personal and spiritual, shaped by a long-standing respect for Zuni and Navajo fetish traditions. His work reaches back into those practices not to replicate them, but to honor their deeper purposes: healing, presence, and connection.
Tantra Gurl
“Tantra Gurl” is a 36-inch bronze horse that carries both mystery and motion. Schaaf calls her a “power horse,” and it’s an apt description. She doesn’t stand still—at least, not in spirit. Her lines seem to breathe. Her form feels alive, like something on the verge of moving, or maybe remembering. She exists in three Florida museum collections now, yet Schaaf never talks about her as an object. He talks about her like a being.
The piece began, as most of his do, with a sense of purpose rather than a plan. Schaaf wanted to create something that embodied fertility and continuity—qualities he associates with the ancient fetishes of the Zuni and Navajo peoples. These small carvings, often of animals, were made not for display but for protection and connection. Schaaf simply magnified that idea. “Tantra Gurl” is a fetish made monumental—a sacred charm enlarged into something almost mythic.
Her body holds that duality. Every curve, muscle, and hollow feels intentional, not decorative. Schaaf shaped her to carry the same energy he feels when sculpting smaller objects, just expanded, so that her physical presence radiates across a room. She isn’t polished to a gleam. Instead, her surface is softened, aged, and burnished by the artist’s hands and fire.
Schaaf describes the process of patination—where color is coaxed into the metal using heat and chemicals—as “watercoloring with fire.” It’s a phrase that suits him perfectly: half technical, half poetic. The finish on “Tantra Gurl” glows with deep browns and muted greens, a blend that mimics the sheen of sacred stones used in traditional carvings. It’s as though she’s made of both earth and light.
In person, “Tantra Gurl” doesn’t feel static. Her weight is grounded, but her energy is upward. The tilt of her head, the subtle lift in her stance—all of it suggests motion toward something unseen. Schaaf’s horses are rarely about realism. They’re emotional, psychological creatures. They seem to carry stories in their bodies, fragments of memory that aren’t just his but collective.
To Schaaf, the horse is an archetype of spirit and survival. Through decades of working with this form, he’s found it endlessly adaptable. Horses can represent strength, fertility, loss, or renewal. In “Tantra Gurl,” they become all those things at once. There’s sensuality in her curves, reverence in her stillness, and wisdom in her texture.
He often says that art has been his medicine. That belief runs through this sculpture. “Tantra Gurl” was created not just to be seen, but to be felt—an object of healing in both making and meaning. For Schaaf, the process of sculpting bronze is almost ritualistic. The casting, the sanding, the firing—all of it mirrors spiritual work: patience, surrender, transformation.
Even after decades of creating, Schaaf continues to revisit this process like a conversation he never tires of. Each new horse adds another sentence to the dialogue between his inner life and the physical world. “Tantra Gurl,” with her earthy grace and mythic stillness, feels like one of his most intimate expressions.
She represents what Schaaf has been searching for through all his years as an artist: a way to bridge the human and the sacred. Bronze, in his hands, becomes more than metal—it becomes a vessel for meaning.
In that sense, “Tantra Gurl” is both timeless and deeply personal. She stands as proof that art can be alive, not because it moves, but because it carries intention. Schaaf’s hands gave her form, but it’s his faith in the creative act that gave her life. And even now, decades after she first emerged from the mold, she continues to hold that quiet, enduring energy—the kind that never stops speaking.
