Painted in Aug, 2026. 20”x20”.
Acrylic on stretched canvas. Price $500.00 Cdn. Unframed
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In my ongoing series of farm animals, it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet done any paintings of sheep. Growing up on a cattle ranch, the focus is obviously on the cattle. My daily routine included significant time feeding, opening water holes, milking or generally taking care of their many needs. However, my dad also had a flock of about a hundred sheep that produced a large number of lambs each Spring. Strangely, I don’t have a lot of memories of our flock, other than the pure exuberance of lambs in the springtime or the chaos of getting them all sheared in a day. In retrospect, they were surprisingly self-reliant.
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If sheep aren’t eating or sleeping, they seem to spend a lot of time just pondering nothing. However, if threatened by predators, people or dogs, they become a single body, moving in a peculiarly fluid manner. Similar to the way a blob of mercury flows around obstacles, splitting and reforming. Herding sheep without a good sheep dog is a true exercise in frustration.
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For this painting, I was interested in the challenge of trying to paint sheep’s wool and loved the interesting texture that wool creates. In some places it acts very much like hair or fur, but in other places it clumps into mats of wool. These different mats and the shadows created between them create a pattern that defines the look of the sheep pelt. For my sheep portrait, I chose to focus on the head so that I could include more character and detail. I particularly like how the sheep stands out against the dark rust red background. I created form and shape by emphasizing the highlights and shadows on the sheep’s head. I’m not sure I was able to introduce much “character” into this sheep portrait, but then I’ve never met a sheep with a strong personality. Overall, I found this painting a fun challenge.
