Rendered with agile calligraphy strokes on paper, the work features one of the artist's favourite subjects, the valiant horse. In understanding John Lee's “horselogy”, it's pertinent to note an interview with Ooi Kok Chuen, in his Melbourne home, for his monograph, A Tumultous Struggle: The Life and Art and Times of John Lee Joo For, of his November 2008 Retrospective at the Penang State Art Gallery: “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.” A “sentient horse, feeling pain and frustration”, as he explained in his book, My Name Is Fire. Virile, restless and unpredictable. John Lee Joo For is extraordinarily gifted in paint, printmaking and letters especially in playwrighting with a producer's choreography to boot. In art, his training pedigree was in England's Brighton, then Camberwell and the prestigious Royal College of Art. As a playwright (he had also been director, producer and stage actor), he pencilled the first few chapters of Malaysian drama in English. He was an academician in art, media studies and theatre, and was also a novelist. In Australia, where he migrated to in 1973, he had spectacular success in his Christian musical, Call Of Guadalupe, and he fought off the pain of his thyroid cancer to see the fruition of his last play, Mary Magdalene: Wanton Saint (2017). His Son Of Zen made it to Broadway. He co-founded the Thursday Art Group and the Penang Teachers Art Circle, and in London, the Malayan Art Circle. In 2008, the Penang State Art Gallery honoured him with a Retrospective, and he had an earlier Retrospective at The Art Gallery Penang in 1995.