Painter on the Road, Summer

This series arose from Francis Bacon’s treatments of a lost Van Gogh self-portrait The painter on the Road to Tarascon (1888), showing Vincent trudging along a road in Provence with his cane and art supplies. Shaw’s studio wall was covered with colour postcards of Bacon’s versions but, as he writes,  “a reproduction of a drawing by Van Gogh of the road with a solitary walking figure came to dominate.” In Shaw’s own landscapes the artist is always a solitary presence at work in a terroir he has made uniquely his own.