Heat of the night

Heat of the Night Oil on canvas Offers considered

Night around the pond is not quiet. It only looks that way if you aren’t watching.

For years I’ve watched this ground after dark, and the painting came to me whole, in a flash, after all that watching. At the top, nearly lost in the trees, is the great horned owl. His body is built from the same brown, purple, and blue strokes as the trunks around him, and only his eyes are fully there, yellow and unblinking, fixed on whoever is looking. He already has what he came for. A snake hangs from his beak.

Far below, small on a patch of green, is a mouse. He has seen another snake coming in, and he has no idea the night is already crowded above him. Another snake is gone, taken by the owl. The mouse’s danger is real, and so is the owl’s success. Neither one makes the night safe for the other.

That is what this painting holds. The owl eats the snake, the snake eats the mouse, and the mouse feeds them both by being alive. Every creature in the frame is a hunter and a meal at once. Take one away and the whole pond shifts. The snakes I respect on this land keep the mice from my wiring and my barns, and the owl keeps the snakes in check. It is one balance, and I live inside it.

I know this owl. He raided my coop in the dark and took two of my hens, and he kept coming back even after the dogs learned to meet him. I don’t paint him as a villain. He is part of what the land does, and I am part of what he works around.

This is the pond at night, with the owl above, the snake in his beak, and the mouse watching another snake come. The owl is the only one who sees all of it, and he is looking straight at you.

One original. Offers considered. prints $100

When I showed the painting to a man I know, he lit up. As a boy, walking to school, he was jumped by a great horned owl, with no warning and nothing he had done. He looked at the painting and told me it was the eyes and the trees, exactly how he saw the owl before it hit him. I offered him the painting for free. He told me to sell it, and if it sells, we go for a burger together. He has never forgotten how big, solid, and strong that owl was. I had painted it as part of the pond’s balance, and he reminded me that the same bird looks very different from underneath.