Painted thousands of meters up in the high Andes above Cusco in Peru, this John Dyer ethno-botanical painting captures a family harvesting potatoes, the staple food in Peru. A passer by is walking her pig through the mountains. Condors fly across the blue sky and horses rest in the warm sunshine. An important painting from this acclaimed artist. Read more below:

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My first painting was painted way up in the Andes, an hour’s trek up from a tiny village called Amaru at a height of around 4000m. The farmer that I was staying with took me up into the mountains to look for the potato harvest and after 1.5 hrs of walking vertically up we came across this small family group clearing one of the last fields in the area. Mother, Father, Grandmother and a child all worked hard and they were accompanied by their animals – pigs and horses. The amazing space-blue of the Andean sky dominates the view with the dry dusty red earth acting as a canvas for the multitude of plants, animals and the biodiverse potato crop of tubers of all colours from blue to red. As I painted, and the family harvested, my host farmer continued to crochet a new Peruvian hat of many colours and geometric shapes. John Dyer

The painting is featured in the book 'Painting the Colours of the World' by Kate Dinn.

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