An Artist's Story

This month, Jeremy Hobson meets internationally-renowned wildlife artist and conservationist David Shepherd.

- Jeremy Hobson

When did you first become interested in chickens?

My family had chickens when I was a child in North London… they were Rhode Island Reds kept for their eggs and the table. We were living in Totteridge during the war and, during the worst nights of the Blitz, I remember that they would be brought into the house for safe-keeping. Why on earth we thought that, had the house received a direct hit, they would be safer in the kitchen than out in the garden, I can’t imagine!

In 1962, after the success of my first one-man Wildlife Exhibition in London, we bought a lovely Elizabethan farmhouse in Surrey, and we kept chickens there in a house and run under a walnut tree. They were Rhode Island Reds too… twelve of them… they laid well and we loved them. Sadly, a fox dug under the wire one night and killed the lot. It was very upsetting and put me off keeping them for a while…

How did you begin life as an artist?