The composition, by John Lee Joo-for’s oeuvre, is so sparing that it’s almost Zen. Horses is one of the favourite themes of this multi-pronged Malaysian-born Australian artist, and a woman (in passionate red, some more) astride a horse always convey sexual connotations. Yet, the woman in purity white, with legs crossed, seems rapt in meditation. Is she (white) meditating in a celestial realm, or has she given way to her baser instincts of a frivolous lark, presumably turning naked on an energetic horse in full gallop. The contrasting woman, one calm and sedate and the other feisty and adventurous, could reside in one same person or be two different individuals, siblings perhaps. The spirit and virility of the horse are most evident in Joo-for’s most “horsey” work, The Spirit That Cannot Be Contained (1980, 114cm x 201cm). In an interview in his Melbourne home for his monograph months ahead of his November 2008 Retrospective at the Penang State Art Gallery, he told Ooi Kok Chuen: “Mine (my horse) is rough jagged incisive, vested with human feelings of angst and anguish, of hope and frustration. My horse is more spiritual than realistic, more symbolic than photogenic…”My horse is humanity. I try to transcend the horse as a symbol.”