The birds at the top left and right corners of the image were originally conceived as some kind of half human/half bird figure. I’d vaguely imagined these bulky birds, shaped a bit like buzzards but a bit more graceful, with human eyes and heart shaped wings. (A bit of trivia: one of my neighbours married a strikingly beautiful young German woman. The village where I live is, to put it kindly, at the redneck end of the human spectrum so whenever I run into her I always muse that it’s a bit like a chance encounter with an alien life form. Anyway, where this gets relevant to painting is that I’ve been trying to give my animal images her eyes- fierce/gentle and honey coloured).

But after I’d worked on the birds for a while they began to emerge as owls, something I have never painted, and I liked the oddity of owls sitting on what will eventually be a fruit tree in broad daylight. It sits well with the central theme of the painting which is all about secret histories: of nations, individuals and places. The final image will have two curious children exploring the contents of a small striped box while a variety of animals look on. The initial idea of painting thousands of stars in a night sky will be replaced with the daytime visual equivalent: hundreds of small daisies on the green grass and probably a shower of pale pink blossom falling from the tree.