Copyright: The Ink Pellet Date:01/2012. "The Big Interview"

He recalls (David Shepherd): ‘Arriving home, I was penniless and had two choices. I could either become an artist or a bus driver. I suspected that most artists starved in garrets, life as a bus driver seemed the safer bet. But my dad was marvellous. He said that if I really wanted to be an artist, I’d better get some training. The only school we knew anything about was The Slade School of Fine Art in London, so I sent them my first bird painting. They turned me down, saying I had no talent.’

It was then that a chance meeting changed the course of his life. David was at a party when he was introduced to Robin Goodwin, a professional painter who specialised in portraits and marine subjects. He recalls: ‘At that time, he wouldn’t take students but agreed to have a look at my work. The next day, I trotted up to his studio in Chelsea with that very first bird picture, and, for reasons that I have never been able to understand, he decided to take me on. I owe all my success to that man.’ But it wasn’t an easy journey – and in a way thank goodness because his story will resonate with any would-be artist. David recalls: ‘The first half-hour I had with Robin ended in tears. He told me, “if you think that because you’re creative you’re different, and you can only work when you feel like it, you can shove off. Artists, like everyone else, have to work eight hours and more a day, seven days a week, to meet their responsibilities.”’

And that told him. ‘Robin never said anything complimentary about my work and he knew just how far to push me. Once I stormed out of his studio, determined never to return, but he leaned out of the window and called down to me in the street: “Don’t be such a coward – I’m still teaching you, so you can’t be that bad!’”

Copyright: The Independent 03/10/2017 Obituary Note

Shepherd was headed back to England. There he deliberated between what he thought were his two only options: earn a living as a bus driver, or starve as an artist.

He gave the second option a try by applying to the Slade – and the strongly worded rejection suggested that buses might in fact be his sole recourse. But a chance encounter with the marine painter Robin Goodwin at a party gave him the opportunity to receive the training he so desperately needed. On seeing Seagulls, Shepherd’s ill-fated painting, Goodwin said: “Oh my God, anybody who paints as badly as that I’ve just got to teach.”

Goodwin knew how to drive his student without quite breaking him, teaching him to paint every day from dawn till dusk. “Don’t talk all that rubbish about painting from your ‘innermost self’,” Goodwin said early on. To him, painting should be considered a business, and only through hard work could one earn a living from it. By 1953 Goodwin had taught Shepherd everything he could. “You’re on your own,” he said.