After several days of snow and bitterly cold temperatures the sky cleared today and turned a deep, clear blue. Everything sparkled and the streets were looking like a Christmas card. So, to keep in tune with the seasons, I’m making more winter-themed work at the moment, including this scene with a barn owl flying over a frosty landscape.

The cold here in Berlin has been intense, but, thankfully, our flat is toasty and we’re cosy indoors. I wish we had an open fire though, that would make the snug feeling perfect, that and maybe listening to the shipping forecast whilst sipping a cup of hot chocolate – there’s nothing so cosy as being indoors under a blanket listening to news of a howling gale somewhere else.

I’ve made images with barn owls before, I find them so awe-inspiring, I never tire of trying to paint them. Whenever I return to Sleaford, the town where I grew up, I take a walk out of town along the river at sunset and I often see a barn owl flying along the river in exactly the same place each time. It always stops me in my tracks and I’m utterly spellbound. I don’t know anybody who reacts differently when they see one of these birds, they are such a magical sight.

I’m not surprised that so much folklore has grown up around barn owls, they are so arresting. Most of the associations are rather doom-laden though; foretelling a death etc, and it was a custom to nail a barn owl to a door to ward off lightening strikes and other evils. I’m glad they don’t do that any more; their habitats are under constant threat and they’ve been struggling in places so they need all the help they can get. Funnily enough, when i see one, they always make me think of my Dad, who passed away a few years ago, perhaps because he was the person who first took me birdwatching when I was a child. I always want to turn to him and say, ‘wow. Dad, did you see that?!’

There are few sights that make me catch my breath like seeing the ghostly shape of a barn owl flying at dusk, it’s just marvellous.