A peculiar black and white figure dominates its red environment, appearing both flat and three-dimensional, delicate and also powerful. Its “body parts” exhibit symmetry, but some are asymmetrical in their position. The body is constructed from geometrical patterns that evoke familiar shapes of snowflakes, crystals, shells, fans, feathers, diatoms, lace, or folded paper, but they seem mysterious in their meaning. The figure is abstract and anonymous, like a robot, in contrast to almost two dozen organically-drawn and friendly-seeming horses that populate the red background. Foals and full-grown horses are depicted from various perspectives, some standing in profile, others prancing, kicking, or lying down. Located among the horses are many small symbols, such as a cloud, a keyhole, numerous circular squiggles, and patches of short, parallel, vertical lines that suggest grass. The rest of the red background is accented by parallel horizontal lines revealing a lighter red underlayer.

According to the title of the print, the central shaman-like figure is a man. His head is suggested by an inverted cone, its vertex forming the point at which it meets the shoulders. The top of the head is edged in triangular peaks like a crown and appears hollow and open to the sky. Below the fanlike chest is a round belly, shaped like a mandala, from which hang legs that bring to mind folded crepe paper or folded aluminum. Arms like dangling diamonds meet hands that reprise the mandala and diamond shapes. Attached at the sides of the arms, a shoulder, and a leg are other shapes that embellish and add authority to the figure. The systematic, linear, and geometric beauty of the body contrasts with the organic, natural beauty of the animals.

Man with Horses was created by impression of an incised and inked block of wood onto rag paper. John Buck often uses a pencil, a nail, a dull stylus or his fingernail to draw on soft wood, sketching and doodling to cover the surface with drawings. His prints are often spooned, or worked against the inked block by hand. For Man with Horses, he may have cut into the wood block with a carving tool; he then inked it with three colors of ink—a light red, the deeper red, and black. Evidence of the white paper underneath remains in places where deep lines incised in the wood did not receive any ink. Surrounding the whole is a black line outside a white border that serves as a framing device for the image. Together, the colors call to mind the amusing old riddle, “What’s black and white and red (read) all over?” answered by, “A newspaper!”—inviting the eye to “read” the entire image and discern the stories that might be hiding there.

John Buck primarily thinks of himself as a sculptor, both because he creates sculptures out of wood and because he thinks of the woodblock printing process as a kind of sculpting—a putting together of a puzzle of pieces. Buck’s father and grandfather were wood carvers, and Buck has said, “I think there is something about working with wood—the natural material; the surface of the wood has a quality unlike a manufactured surface. It is hard and soft. The grain moves in different directions. And when you draw and carve into it, it yields in different directions. There is an automatic and direct relationship between the nature of the wood and how I am able to work with it…[In the carving of wood], there is a physical activity that is more about nature in the making—not just the concept of the image, but the actual making, is connected to nature.” He has said that he begins working the surface of his woodblocks with personal images from his own experience and works toward an idea that “reaches for something outside my own personal dimension.” A reoccurring image in both his sculptures and prints is an anonymous, robot-like figure that conveys human qualities, and suggests the universality of human spirit.