A diptych of a Barn owl hunting in the twilight autumnal fields. The painting is named after a Wendell Berry poem with the same title. The notion that it is only humans that experience a sense of existential dread or worry about their future, really struck a chord with me.

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry

Medium/size: Oil on two canvases 97x120cm (97x60cm each)

Private Collection United Kingdom