Sacrifice

Art Gallery of Ontario

Sacrifice 1989 acrylic on canvas Gift of The Estate of Denyse Thomasos, through the American Friends of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Inc., 2022 2022/9 Audio description of the work This work is a figurative painting in a portrait orientation and is about the size of a queen size mattress at 6 and a half feet or 2 meters tall by 5 and a half feet or 1.7 meters wide. It depicts a black horse suspended in a white cloth harness dangling beside a mound of skulls piled against an interior wall. The colours in this work are hues of browns with beige and yellow tones. With it’s body facing right, the dark horse dominates the top half of the painting. The harness has openings for the horse's legs and its tail. In the upper right corner is a high up small deep set window. It’s bright on the other side of it.The horse’s head is down and it has its nose in what is presumably a bag of feed. Thin rope dangles down at the far left and connects to a large heavy counterweight which is a long sack that lays on the ground at the bottom left beside a canvas horse trough water bag. On the right side, the skulls are piled to the height of the horse’s knees and cascade downward toward centre. The skulls have dark eye sockets and are various shades, some are black some are bleached completely white which blend in with the back wall. Hung to the left of the painting is a small framed black and white work which is the same image as an etching. It is signed by the artist. End of Audio Description. Exhibition label text: This early work is among the first major paintings in which Thomasos directly references her research on slavery. To create this dark and confined space, she uses a muted colour palette. A black horse hangs above a pile of human skulls, hoisted in the air by an old-fashioned sling with pulls, straps, and a large counterweight resembling a body bag. The looseness of Thomasos’s approach is evident in her gestural brushstrokes. In this haunting and unnerving scene, the skulls fade into the background as though they are infinite. Preparatory photographs and a related print are on view nearby. End of Exhibition label text.