NB: This painting can be secured now. It is on show in John Dyer’s ‘Spirit of the Harvest’ Exhibition at the Eden Project and will be shipped after 9 February 2026, or sooner on request.

In ‘Music and Llamas at the Potato Harvest, Taquile Island, Peru’, British artist John Dyer celebrates the extraordinary harmony between landscape, culture, and tradition on this remote island in Lake Titicaca. Painted in for his Spirit of the Harvest exhibition at the Eden Project and inspired by his fieldwork and paintings high in the Peruvian Andes, the painting captures the dazzling energy of the world’s last great potato festival.

Across sun-lit terraces, local people in traditional dress tend to their harvest, spreading vivid woven fabrics to freeze-dry the potatoes in the high-altitude air. The women’s embroidered skirts and bright shawls shimmer in the light, while the men, wearing hand-crocheted hats that reveal their place in the community, march with fifes and drums beneath the fluttering Peruvian flag. Music drifts through the golden fields as llamas and alpacas, draped in colourful blankets, stand proudly among the cacti and crops.

In the foreground, guinea pigs gather inquisitively beside the patterned rugs, while pink Puno flamingos soar over the deep blue of Lake Titicaca. Beyond, the snow-capped Andes rise into a sky of cobalt and violet hues. Every detail in the painting speaks of rhythm, celebration, and connection — a living record of how people, animals, and the land come together at the turning of the seasons.

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