Coastal artists join forces to display works for “Year of the Fire Horse” at Visual Arts Center in Newport

By LORI TOBIAS/Oregon ArtsWatch

NEWPORT — The Year of the Fire Horse has spurred five coastal artists to join in an exhibit inspired by an infrequent confluence in the Chinese zodiac. It happens once every 60 years and was believed in Japanese culture, where it is known as hinoe uma, to be so inauspicious for females that some couples simply opted not to have children.

The exhibit opened last week at Newport’s Visual Arts Center and will be up through Nov. 1. Curated by Cynthia Jacobi, the show features her work, along with that of Marilyn Burkhardt, Marcy Kenyon, Marion Moir, and Charlotte Van Zant-King. Mediums include wood, watercolor, collage, lino block print, acrylic, wax, and ceramics.

Their “work leans into the mystic strength and adventurous spirit of horses,” while also exploring the “rare convergence of zodiac and lunar calendar that occurs only once every 60 years and carries both celebrated traits of strength and leadership and cautionary ones of impulsiveness and recklessness,” said Darcy Lawrence, the visual arts center’s spokeswoman.

The show also includes one of the late Martin Anderson’s neon horses. The artist was known in the ‘90s for the bright horses set along Interstate 5 between Salem and Eugene.

“This is one of his smallest horses; it’s supposed to be a colt,” said Burkhardt, who displayed the red neon horse in her now-shuttered Cloverdale gallery. “It’s maybe 6 feet tall and 8 or 9 feet in length.”

The neon tubes are no longer intact but have been replaced with LED strips. “It does say ‘Fire Horse’ to me,” Burkhardt said.

The Chinese calendar has 12 zodiac animals that pair with five elements. It takes 60 years for each pairing to recur. This year pairs the horse with the element of fire. “Hinoe means fire, but also bright sun, so very passionate, very strong, bright personality and also smart choices,” said Sachiko Otsuki, curator at the Lincoln County Historical Society and instructor in art history in the Japanese culture at Oregon Coast Community College.

Jacobi was inspired to curate the show after learning of the Year of the Fire Horse and the curse that accompanies it.

“When I was a young girl, I read all the horse books,” Jacobi said. “It was going on an adventure with this powerful animal. I went to school in England; we had horseback riding twice a week as part of our classwork. How can it be this curse on women born that year?”

The answer to that question lies in centuries-old history, according to The Japan Times. A December 2025 story traces the stigma to 1682, when a young woman fell in love with a temple assistant and started a fire in an effort to connect with him. For her troubles, she was burned at the stake, “a full circle ending” for the woman who was born in the previous Year of the Fire Horse, 1666.

The Times article noted that “Fire Horse babies are said to be stubborn and violent — that is, if they’re women. This decidedly unequal-opportunity superstition says that girls born in the Year of the Fire Horse will be temperamental, have bad marriages and be lethal threats to their fathers and husbands.”

The stigma was once so strongly held that in the last Year of the Fire Horse, 1966, birth rates in Japan dropped by more than 20 percent. Otsuki was born five years later.

Other Asian countries have traditionally viewed the Fire Horse in a more positive light. In China, the Fire Horse is a symbol of transformation; in South Korea, the year is viewed as one of energy, charisma, and boldness, and in Vietnam, uncommon strength and success.

Although she’d lived a block from New York City’s Chinatown for 40 years and was well versed in the Chinese zodiac signs, artist Marcy Kenyon hadn’t heard of the Fire Horse until Jacobi invited her to show her horses, often created from beach finds including driftwood and kelp.

“Making art is an act of liberation,” said Kenyon. “Women who are born in the Year of the Fire Horse are thought to be fiercely independent. Though I was born in the Year of the Wood Horse, I am honored to join this group of talented women whose creative spirits thrive on independence and free expression.”

• This story was originally published by our news partner Oregon ArtsWatch. For more arts news coverage go to Oregon ArtsWatch
• Lori Tobias is a longtime Newport-based journalist and author who can be reached at [email protected]