ORIGINAL OIL
PAINTING
PAINTING
Original £14013.75x7 inches (34x18 cm)
Framed £18017.25x10.5 inches (43x27 cm)
About "Artist" Frames
All
prints come
"ready to hang"
in handmade
hand-embellished
"Artist's Frame"
"ready to hang"
in handmade
hand-embellished
"Artist's Frame"
Print £0999x19 inches (23x48 cm)
includes frame
Print £0666 x 12 inches (15x30 cm)
includes frame
Print £0334 x 8.5 inches (10 x 20 cm)
includes frame
About "Artist" Frames
When we first moved to Shropshire a friend of Peter's who runs a famous Tea Room, when he asked her what
the Stiperstones, the second highest hill in Shropshire far into western reaches of The Welsh Marches, was like, said "It's
like Brighton Beach". Then
a neighbor, who was intrigued by the fact that an Artist had come to
live nearby offered to drive Peter to the most direct point
of access, and off they duly went one cold Autumn morning.Little did the Artist realise what he was in for . . . . . . .Having
arrived at a suitable start point, his friend agreed to wait one hour
and call
the Air Ambulance if he had not had a communication within that time.
He remarked to two others in the car park "he says he can't paint it
unless he sees it". And so the exploration began, out of the car park,
across a field, over a small bleak roadway, over a stile, up a small
approach path onto what he took to be the main walkers path until,
before too long at all, this ascending "pathway" soon became no pathway at all and an overhanging heavy mist descended inch by inch until it felt like
he was walking into an upturned ocean. Having spent many hours previously walking the
Shropshire Hills and seeing nobody the Artist was astonished when out
of the mist a man suddenly appeared walking in the opposite direction! He duly
said "good morning" and passed on by.Meanwhile,
"the "ocean" continued to descend and the "pathway" now resembled five
miles of building rubble, blocks of rough stone presenting
themselves at every conceivable angle and extremely wet and dangerous, a terrain caused by constant freezing and thawing during the last Ice Age which shattered the quartzite
into a mass of jumbled scree surrounding several residual rocky tors.He scrambled on.He eventually sighted The Devil's Chair, the most famous feature of the long Stiperstones summit ridge crowned by several rugged, jagged
outcrops of rock and gazed out over the Welsh border and took-in the amazing views in
all directions,
as he fully realised his Tea Room owning friend had somewhat
understated the terrain because it would be more accurate to describe
the
surrounding area as stunning raw beauty and the Stperstones themselves
as a
Lunar surface! "At
this point the Price to pay for soggy paper and pencils and extreme
cold and a great deal of personal discomfort had been paid" so the time
had arrived to "sketch quickly and go" as is sometimes the case with
painting or drawing "en plein air" and the reward in this case is the
above picture, a small painting carried out as an exploration for a far
bigger one.The Devil's Chair is the largest and best known of the Tors that pierce the quartzite ridge of the Stiperstones, formed during the last Ice Age around
480 Million years ago and its summit would have stood out above the
glaciers, freezing and thawing, under tremendous pressure constant;y
until the quartzite shattered
into what looks like "five miles of builders rubble". At
the midwinter solstice, all the ghosts of Shropshire assemble at the
Stiperstones and the area is steeped in folklore and legend; "The
Seven Whistlers", six birds who fly together searching for the lost of
their number; which if found, would end the world, Wild Edric and his ghost army also haunt the Stiperstones to appear at times of National crisis and the area is steeped in Arthurian legend and it is perhaps no coincidence that a
huge magical fish guards Edric's sword at Bomere Pool, and will
only give it up to his appropriate heir . . . . . . . .The rocks of the Devil's Chair itself were brought there by the Devil carrying a load of stones in his apron
from Ireland when planning to fill in a valley on the other side of the Stiperstones,
known as Hell's Gutter, but after taking rest, his apron strings broke and the rocks tumbled
out and he left them scattered all over
the ridge and on the longest night of the year he sits on his
chair, summing all the local witches and evil spirits and they choose their king for the year . . . . . . . .
