A Snowy Owl in flight with the Aurora Borealis. Spirit and Ghost of the north while not precisely a diptych are companion pieces and painted concurrently. Both began as quite abstract skyscapes, went through several iterations and ultimately became what they now are; secretive or rather fugitive nocturnes. The Aurora in Spirit is taken from a still from one of my favourite films; Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death and the line of trees and snowy slopes was something I saw while walking after dark.

In Ghost we see a Great Grey Owl perched with a moonlit landscape and sky I encountered on that same walk in the Los Filabres range of mountians in Almeria Province in Spain.