The Loweswater Shepherd

Comments

Login or register to add a comment

This is super Peter and hoorah for artistic licence!

Beautifully painted and I love the story behind it.

This is beautifully painted Peter, love the greens and the hint of sunlight on the leaves. well done with the artistic licence.

Great painting, Peter

Thanks very much, all!

"The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you are an artist." (Max Jacob) I must have pushed my bike a hundred times down this little track to Loweswater and a cuppa at the Kirkstile Inn, but only once did I meet with this shepherd driving his flock along it towards me. To make a painting with the help of my photo, I just had to remove the shepherd from his quad bike, put a staff in his hand et voila! Oh, and the actual shepherd was wearing a green boiler suit, which would I think have made little visual contribution in this leafy context. In changing him out of the boiler suit, I also wanted to turn a 21st century farmer into the archetypal shepherd. But why did I decide to give my shepherd a red hat? I was following the example of many poetic landscape compositions by favourite masters such as Corot, in placing a dash of red in a countryside scene where greens and blues naturally predominate.