Hare in trap

With its startling blue eye exuding fear, pain and yearning for freedom and 'flowers' of blood and fur scattering the foreground, 'Hare in trap' is powerfully autobiographical. Nolan suggested that the hare's blue eyes relate to his father: during a car trip to northern Victoria, Nolan and his father saw a hare caught in a trap, and the look in his father's blue eyes struck him vividly. But Nolan had the same eyes, and this enigmatic work may connect with several aspects of his experience: the restrictions of his fathers' working-class life; his father's and grandfathers' difficult lives on the land; or perhaps Nolan's anxieties as an army deserter or indeed his sense of emotional entrapment at Heide, which may link to the inner meaning of his Kelly series.