San Benito County artists shine at the 90th Saddle Horse Show and Rodeo

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Ever since they began painting them 30,000 years ago on the walls of the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave in France, artists have been fascinated by horses. This year, the 90th Annual San Benito County Saddle Horse Show & Rodeo features work by two Hollister artists: a new event poster by local favorite Marti Hubbell and an exhibition of some rarely seen artwork by past master Tom Medeiros.

Hubbell’s San Benito County roots stretch back to the homestead her great-grandfather founded in 1882. While she showed an aptitude for art in high school, her parents discouraged her from following what they considered an unstable profession.

“Art for me was an off-and-on hobby,” she said. “But there was an almost 20-year stretch where I didn’t touch a paintbrush or pencil. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that I got serious about it again. One night, I went to an art class. And that was the catalyst.”

Largely self-taught, she never lost sight of her goal of becoming a professional artist. Branching out from her familiar ranch scenes of cowboys, cowgirls, horses and cattle, Hubbell began researching other subjects for her work.

“I think American Indians are wonderful subjects because of all the textures and colors,” she said. “And recently, I have been painting charras, the Hispanic girls who ride sidesaddle in these beautiful dresses.”

This year’s poster is the 10th that Hubbell has painted for the Saddle Horse Show, but she has also designed posters for other events like the Grand Nationals Rodeo, California Rodeo Salinas and the Monterey County Cowboy Festival.

Hubbell was asked to develop something special for the rodeo’s 90th year. She chose figure-8 roping, an event unique to San Benito County.

“I was attempting to paint a replica of a very old program from the rodeo from the 1930s and how it was tacked on a wall,” she said. “Getting it from my head to paper and then to canvas was very challenging.”

Saying that the project of how to make the image three-dimensional was “good for my aging brain to have to figure out,” Hubbell made the poster come alive with a cow bursting out of the image, entangled in the rope’s figure-8, and a cowboy following right behind.

When she works alone in her studio, Hubbell is unsure how her work will be received.

“It is lonely, but it is also rewarding,” she said, “But I think that when you’ve been asked to provide an image for something that so many people are going to see, you must be doing something right!”

Some of Hubbell’s previous work, including other poster designs, are on view in the Saddle Horse and Rodeo Museum, located at Bolado Park. This year, it will be joined by a major retrospective of paintings by Tom Medeiros, a third-generation San Benito native who spent two decades managing the rodeo and the county fair.

Medeiros served in the army during WWII, posted at a radar station along the Oregon coast. When the war ended, he returned to Hollister and opened a dairy with his father and brother.  

“He contracted polio in 1948,” his son Tom Medeiros Jr. said, “and that left him too weak for that kind of work. He was with the Farm Bureau for a while, and in 1954, he went to work at Bolado Park. So even though he couldn’t work in agriculture anymore, he was still connected to the fair and rodeo.”

Somewhere along the line, Medeiros took up painting and photography. Before the onset of polio, he had been active in ranching and horse shows, which gave him ample subject matter for his work.

“I always thought his paintings were unique,” his son said. “He picked up on many things they did on ranches, like branding and moving cattle. In the ’50s and the early ’60s, I don’t know of other artists in San Benito County doing cowboys and western art.”

The polio, which left Medeiros with a shake in his right hand, curtailed what might have been a productive artistic career. According to Medeiros Jr., his father produced less than 40 paintings, all still owned by the family.

“I think he would have liked to have been a professional,” he said. “He was more of a hobbyist and busy raising a family. He never painted to sell.”

Before his death in 2005, Medeiros’ work was displayed at rodeos, fairs and local businesses including San Benito Bank and a real estate office. He also had showings at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital and the San Mateo County Library. Two of his paintings are on loan to the Saddle Horse Show and Rodeo Museum at Bolado Park and during this year his work is featured there in a special showing.

“I ask myself what is it about his art that appeals to people,” Medeiros Jr. said. “I think it is because people can see immediately that they are paintings of San Benito County, not because they recognize some particular place. There is just something about their colors and look that people love.”

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