On any given weekday morning, Cris Gamet is intensely busy. If she’s not in a barn trimming horse hooves, she’s outside painting plein-air landscapes or working on a still life at Black Mule Studio, the creative space she built off Glasco Turnpike. Fridays, she teaches foundational drawing and oil painting at the Woodstock School of Art (WSA).
For more than four decades, Gamet has lived and worked in Woodstock, quietly straddling two worlds: that of a fiercely focused artist and a farrier who trims and shoes horses’ hooves. As such, she embraces a life that, at first glance, appears contradictory—but for her, the contrast is the point. “When I’m doing either one,” she said, “I’m focused on that and I’m not worried about anything else.”
Though she loves horses, she doesn’t paint them. “I love the shape of the horse,” she said, “but I’m not drawn to painting them. I am drawn to sculpting them. I’m working on a stone carving now of a horse head.”
Instead, she paints what excites her—a patch of landscape glimpsed while riding her motorcycle or driving to a farrier job. “I paint whatever makes me get excited when I see it, for whatever reason.”
Gamet’s foundation as an artist and farrier was laid early. Raised on a dairy farm in the Finger Lakes, she was one of four siblings. Her father, “very hands-on and old-school,” kept workhorses, and the children had their own. In winter, without television, she and her brother filled sketchbooks with horse drawings—early attempts that, she admits, “looked more like dogs.”
Her interest in art intensified at age 9, when she glimpsed an art teacher helping a boy paint a tall ship. “I was mesmerized,” she said. “I thought, ‘That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen—I want to learn to do that.’”
As a teen, she began studying with painter Albert Aleixo. His class had only three students and focused on still lifes. “I just took to it,” she said. Aleixo also sparked her interest in art history. “I didn’t know anything about art history because I was a farm girl.”
The lessons ended, but one exchange stayed with her. When Aleixo asked about her post-high school plans, Gamet said she had enlisted in the Air Force. “He said, ‘You’re what?!’”
She never went. Her mother was terminally ill with cancer, and Gamet spent three years caring for her. During that time, she built a cabin on land her father gave her. “I was very lucky to have a dad who was willing to teach me anything I wanted to learn,” she said. “Actually, the last present my father ever got me was a chainsaw for Christmas—and I say thank you every time I use it.”
But a year after her mother’s death, Gamet delayed moving into her cabin so she could spend a summer studying privately with Franklin Alexander, a co-founder of the WSA. The experience cemented a resolution. “When you watch somebody pass away at 43 years old, with their whole life ahead of them—it gives you a whole different outlook,” she said. “I decided, then and there, I would live my life for me.”
Her resolve only grew after losing a younger brother to AIDS and a sister-in-law to an opioid overdose. “All these young deaths kept reinforcing for me: you’ve got to get on with your life,” she said. “If there’s something you want to do, you’ve got to do it.”
She hadn’t planned to stay in Woodstock, but 45 years later, she still lives in town with her partner of 33 years. “It’s the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere,” she said. “And it’s like we’re still waiting to see what happens.”
While studying with Alexander and artist Nick Buhalis, Gamet worked nearly 20 years as a picture-framer at the former Woodstock Framing Gallery. “I jumped on it because it was a combination of everything I love to do.”
That upbringing made her self-reliant. “If something broke, we fixed it. We built our own barns,” she said. Picture-framing let her build, show her own art, and meet artists like Donald Elder and Robert Ohnigian, whose work she framed.
“She’s a natural painter and also a natural friend to Woodstock artists like me,” Ohnigian said. “She’s earthy, with a real feel for the landscape.”
Although Elder paints abstract landscapes, he said he has enjoyed seeing Gamet’s “beautifully painted realistic work” develop over the past 30 years. “Her work is very accomplished, and influenced by her life and her upbringing—the places she’s lived, where she lives now,” he said. “I’ve seen it evolve too—the longer you paint, the more you explore.”
“As a picture-framer, she was very skilled with wood and a good tactician,” said Ohnigian. “She’s very earthy, with a real feel for the landscape.”
In her mid-40s, Gamet was diagnosed with breast cancer—just like her mother. “When somebody says, ‘You have cancer,’ it really gets your attention,” she said. Though her prognosis was relatively good, it was a turning point.
She didn’t know what to do next until a year later, when she pursued a longtime dream and trained as a farrier. Her father had shod horses, and she thought it would be easy. It wasn’t.
“You put a straight piece of steel in a forge, heat it up to 1,500 degrees, and bend it over an anvil,” she said. “Even when steel is that hot, it doesn’t just bend. You have to wail on it.”
The job demanded focus and skill. “If you go too far, you run into the red stuff. You can really hurt them, not to mention they could hurt you.”
She built her client base in Woodstock through word of mouth, focusing on small farms and individual owners. The physical toll made painting difficult at first. “To come home and think you’re going to stay up all night and paint—well, no, that didn’t happen.”
Over time, she scaled back and returned to painting. Her oil landscapes often include vintage elements like tractors or bottles. Her still lifes feature fruit and flowers.
Though she prefers solitude, she thrives in the classroom. “We’re talking about art, for God’s sake. We yuck it up and laugh a lot—if you’re not having fun, what’s the point?”
Her teaching style emphasizes the basics: form, color theory, composition. “We start with a sphere, a cone, and a cube,” she said. She arranges simple and complex still lifes, then circulates the room. “You can learn from your students,” she added. “I’m quite shocked, in a good way, by some of their work.”
Susan Piperato is a contributing reporter. Send correspondence to reporting@theoverlooknews.com.