“Mob Rules” is a painting that has been in
my head for years, and I am very excited to finally be able to bring it into
being. All of us have observed, at one
time or another, songbirds mobbing a much larger bird. I see it frequently here in Arizona, where
gutsy little house finches and sparrows routinely dive-bomb ravens and even
hawks to warn them from their territory and keep them away from their
young. I’ve never been fortunate enough
to see songbird mobbing an owl, but it is an image that has been in my head
since five-years-of-age when I watched Disney’s Bambi. Early in the film, a flock of chittering
birds circles the head of the wise old owl until he shouts “Hoo!” and they fly
away; little did I appreciate at the time that the animators were not
describing something fanciful, but rather an actual behaviour.

I have been very excited about UK song
birds ever since my first visit to England in 2012. It is a phenomenon that
other bird-lovers will understand entirely, that when one enjoys both birds and
travel, one can be surprised and delighted even by that which may be quite
common and even mundane to jaded locals. As common a visitor as they may be to
backyard bird feeders, I still can’t take the acid yellows, indigo blues, and
lime-peel greens of the Blue Tit for granted. I initially intended to have the owl in this
piece mobbed by a group of mixed songbirds, likely Goldfinches, Long-Tailed
Tits and Blue Tits, but as the piece progressed, I decided to err on the side
of a simpler composition and a more reductive color palette.

I encountered the Tawny Owl at the
International Centre for Birds of Prey in Newant. His puffed-up chest, languidly opening and
closing eyes, and stern little face instantly made him the right subject matter
for my long conceptualized but never realized “Mobbing” painting. Several years
earlier I did a small series of UK bird paintings called “The Green Tunnel.” In
these pieces, songbirds appear suspended in the middle of a wreath of greenery
inspired by driving down densely hedge-rowed and tree shadowed country lanes in
the Cotswolds. Here, I chose to show a bare-branched grape vine wreath, but the
warm greens of the background still suggest surrounding green-gold growth of
Spring. It is a fittingly regal roost
for the owl, symbolically associated with wisdom and insight. Indeed the
centrality and rough symmetry of the image creates a feeling almost reminiscent
of an altarpiece. In the context, the Blue
Tits could be cherubim wielding sensors, or alternately, chattering children
disrupting the quietude of Nature’s church.