About this artwork

The Donkey by G.K. Chesterton

"When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet."

Here’s something a bit different. When I first read this poem by G.K. Chesterton in “The Rattlebag” anthology, I was brought up short by the revelation of those last two lines... “So it’s that donkey!” Since then, I’ve been thinking on and off about whether I might be able to make some sort of painting about the poem.
A minor challenge was finding a donkey to photograph, and getting him or her to pose in a way helpful to the composition I had in mind. I photographed a couple of likely candidates grazing in a small field opposite “Supervalue” in Dungloe in Donegal, but they would not really pose as I required!
In the meantime, my wife Ann had taken up working at a stables, where one of the residents was a grey donkey named – Peter! I just needed a good photo, and managed to get one when I visited the stables just before Christmas.
I began painting the picture, a sort of tableau of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, in January 2014, and it was more or less complete by the middle of February. During that short time, sadly Peter died.
So this is it – in paint at least – his “One far fierce hour and sweet”.