Untitled Striding Figure, 1 is both the first large-scale work that Houseago created in bronze, and the first that he intended for outdoor display. Houseago credits his 2003 move to Los Angeles with his interest in outdoor sculpture—the city is expansive, and he found it to be a place he was always “trying to fill.”

As a sculptor working in a figurative mode, Houseago is keenly aware of the bronze body's habitual association with heroism and grandeur. In contrast, Houseago has explained his attempts to make “a monument to the body's frailty, its dynamism, its history, its relation to gravity and time.” He has cited Alberto Giacometti as influential for his nuanced explorations of the human form.