Artwork of the Day - Shead - The Rocking Horse

Garry Shead (b.1942)
The Rocking Horse 1986
Oil on canvas
90 x 120 cm
Provenance: Private collection Sydney
no.11133

Spanning more than five years, the 'Outback' series is an important period of work by Garry Shead that encapsulates his father’s narrative history of the adventurous jackaroo. Themes running throughout the body of work include loss of freedom and frustration symbolised by the breaking of the horse. Visually inspired by the outback landscapes by Sidney Nolan, the paintings are composed of warm ochres and burnt sienna reds. Initially the horses depicted in the early works from the series contained parts of the female body. The horses evolved to embody a sexual energy typically reserved for Shead’s female subjects and the relationship between man and horse served “as a metaphor for the relationship between man and woman, while the vastness of the outback landscape is constant setting for this drama.”1

1 Grishin S, Garry Shead and The Erotic Muse, Craftsman House, 2001 p.87