Canadian exhibition “Horse Power” traces the horse’s long life in art
At Rookleys Canadian Art in Ridgeway, Canada, a new exhibition is using the horse to do more than simply decorate the canvas. “Horse Power,” on view from May 30 to July 31, 2026, brings together more than 80 works from the gallery’s collection, pairing historical and contemporary art to examine how one animal has carried symbolic, technical, and cultural weight across generations.
The show is presented in collaboration with the nearby Fort Erie Race Track, which opened in 1897, and that partnership gives the exhibition a useful double frame: the horse as both subject of artistic interpretation and living presence in a regional culture shaped by racing, labor, and leisure. Rather than treating equine imagery as a niche theme, the exhibition positions it as a lens through which to read Canadian art history more broadly.
Among the highlights is Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis (1903–1970), whose “Horse-Drawn Sleigh and Covered Bridge” from around 1968 does not center the animal directly, yet still registers the horse as an everyday constant in winter life. Nearby, Robert Elmer Lougheed’s “Mare and Colt” and Franklin Arbuckle’s “The Filly,” both from around 1950, offer a more explicit study of the horse as a subject of pastoral grace. Their handling of light, color, and brushwork underscores a familiar tension in equine painting: the need to render anatomy convincingly while also preserving the animal’s emotional charge.
The exhibition also looks forward. Works by Chinese Canadian artist Peter Cheung, including “Hack Your Own Path” from 2026, connect the horse to the energy of the racetrack and to quieter scenes of riders, stalls, and trails. That range suggests why the motif has endured: it can signify speed, labor, companionship, and memory all at once.
By bringing historical and contemporary works into the same conversation, “Horse Power” argues that the horse remains one of art’s most adaptable subjects — and one of the clearest ways to see how Canadian artists have pictured culture itself.
