A meeting with a Dartmoor blackface sheep
My day was over at Ullacombe barn where my two week studio space for Devon Open Studios was taking place and like most days I decided to blow out the cobwebs on the moor. I went to Black Hill which is the east side of Dartmoor, just a little further up from Ullacombe near Haytor.
The wind blows constantly on the moors and today was no exception. Thin tissue like sheets of wispy clouds shifted around slowly revealing blue sky and shafts of light from the watery sun. Some of the clouds were like long lengths of cotton wool that had been twisted round and round as if god was doing some diy and had dropped the screws!
As I reached the brow of the hill from the carpark, Haytor loomed ahead of me seeming to shout “Hay, I’m here, covered in grockles again.” I could see them, all milling around, like ants, climbing to the top, shouting and waving. I go up too sometimes, but here on Black Hill at the Vale it is quieter. It’s at least a mile away, possibly two and amazes me how you can hear people on the rocks if the wind is blowing this way. But today it was an east wind so it was quiet.
I followed the track north, keeping Haytor rocks on the left. Occasional larks rose from the gorse and heather and small flocks of crows pecked about on grass clearings. Sheep grazed on the new shoots of heather in the wild fire burnt gorse bushes.
And then I saw him. 20 yards away, standing in the middle of the path was a very handsome blackfaced ram with large curly horns and tousled coat of pure wildness. For a long moment our eyes met as we sized each other up. There was no way I wanted to be the bigger animal, for I was in complete awe of this magnificent creature. I would be quite happy to stand aside for him and let him make his way through. I lowered my eyes so he didn’t feel threatened as I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t run at me with those formidable horns.
I felt relief as well as disappointment as he turned his head to walk away from the path. But as he did so I noticed one of his horns was woven through with heather, gorse, hawthorn and bracken. Even though I couldn’t see him that clearly up to now, he suddenly became sharply in focus in hyperreal colour and I knew in that instant that he could be nothing less than a god.
After that encounter, I became rather obsessed with him, and I searched for him on the path whilst carving him out of lino.
But to no avail! Other sheep were there, but not him. In hindsight I wasn’t really surprised, he was an otherworldly sheep deity so would remain elusive.
I printed him with my body press (that’s my feet), gilded his halo in metal leaf and painted the moorland flora with gouache paint.
There are more versions here (gilded horns, black and white, coloured flora).
Now I’m working on another version that will be printed entirely from Dartmoor inks I’ve made from Dartmoor charcoal, wind falls berries, bracken ink and gorse flower ink.
Hail the Sheep!