In the Artist and Muse series Shead pays homage to the Old Masters. In these paintings we see the artistic muse Erato, as she may have appeared to Rembrandt, Goya or Velasquez. Shead fuses himself with the image of his artist-master, making these paintings some what autobiographical. 

Sasha Grishin writes that 'there is a profound tenderness [to these paintings] where, for the artist, the Muse is also a revelation, something magical…' 

Grishin S, Garry Shead and the Erotic Muse, Craftsman House, 2001, p.174