The owl looks back. That, in the end, is the whole of the painting. Another of a month-long trifecta that is coming to fruition this week.
I had set out to render the bird in something other than the customary brown and umber. Wisdom, in the older mythologies, keeps strange company. She walks the night with Athena, peers from the shoulder of Minerva, hunts among the Egyptian dead. None of that ground is quiet. None of it is soft. So I reached instead for cobalt and violet, for the colours one finds in the small hours when the eye begins to invent what the dark refuses to provide.
The oval canvas was a deliberate cheek. Portraiture in the old style insisted upon the oval for saints, mothers, and minor aristocrats. I rather liked the idea of an owl looking out from the frame once reserved for one’s great-aunt.
The eyes did most of the labour. I worked them in successive glazes of cadmium and ochre, then pressed the highlights in with the smallest brush I owned, the one I keep meaning to replace and never do. An owl’s eyes occupy almost a third of its skull. The painter who shortchanges them is painting something else entirely.
The beak, hooked and serious, settles the matter. There is no kindness in an owl. There is only attention. Wisdom, I suspect, looks much the same.
Acrylic on oval canvas. Available through Kreative Forge.
