THE RED PONY
“The Red Pony” had its debut in 1988, 53” x 72”, acrylic on canvas, and is in the collection of Susan and the late Nat Tileston. The use of “The Red Pony” saw its return in small paintings for Paint The Town in 2002/2003, and again in 2024 with its reuse in current paintings.
The use of expressionistic animals in the work began in 1986 with the Deity Series (dog as god series), as an outcome of having to walk by a derelict house with 6 to 10 ferocious chained barking dogs in the winter time in order to get to our house. This evolved into “The Nine Lives Of Pepper Boucher”, a favourite cat that seemed to have more than nine lives. Around the same time our young family visited a The Metropolitan Toronto Zoo. I brought home a catalogue of zoo animals and started cutting out the animals and used them in precarious encounters with abstracted shapes and gestures in 1987. In 1988 the Red Pony was used for the first time and I still have no idea why it was Red. Perhaps I saw a cover of John Steinbeck’s Novella “The Red Pony”, but its’ later influence has affected recent works after listening to the late Frank Muller’s beautiful reading in the audiobook edition of “The Red Pony”.
The Red Pony, and other systemic visual languages were used as counterpoints to the abstract painting style. The emblems, and the other signal and language systems (such as ASL - American Sign Language, ICS - International Code of Signals (Marine Signal Flags), Morse Code, and Braille) were used as counterpoints to the abstraction, and also as understandable entry portals into the abstract paintings.
“The Red Pony” had its debut in 1988, 53” x 72”, acrylic on canvas, and is in the collection of Susan and the late Nat Tileston. The use of “The Red Pony” saw its return in small paintings for Paint The Town in 2002/2003, and again in 2024 with its reuse in current paintings.
The use of expressionistic animals in the work began in 1986 with the Deity Series (dog as god series), as an outcome of having to walk by a derelict house with 6 to 10 ferocious chained barking dogs in the winter time in order to get to our house. This evolved into “The Nine Lives Of Pepper Boucher”, a favourite cat that seemed to have more than nine lives. Around the same time our young family visited a The Metropolitan Toronto Zoo. I brought home a catalogue of zoo animals and started cutting out the animals and used them in precarious encounters with abstracted shapes and gestures in 1987. In 1988 the Red Pony was used for the first time and I still have no idea why it was Red. Perhaps I saw a cover of John Steinbeck’s Novella “The Red Pony”, but its’ later influence has affected recent works after listening to the late Frank Muller’s beautiful reading in the audiobook edition of “The Red Pony”.
The Red Pony, and other systemic visual languages were used as counterpoints to the abstract painting style. The emblems, and the other signal and language systems (such as ASL - American Sign Language, ICS - International Code of Signals (Marine Signal Flags), Morse Code, and Braille) were used as counterpoints to the abstraction, and also as understandable entry portals into the abstract paintings.
