Title/headline . . . . . . How Peter began painting rural scenes is simple, even if it sounds daft.By : Deborah Susan Jones : EditorWhen
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 neighbour, 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
. . . . . . . .By : Deborah Susan Jones : Editor
