Original Oil painting on canvas, mounted to a cradled birch panel.

20" x 20" x1.5"

My fondest childhood memories were made during visits to my grandparents’ dairy farm.  At age nineteen I inherited the farm and moved into the house that had so much family history.  Barn Owls nested in the barn my grandfather had built in 1925.  The now-rickety barn was perfect for them – lots of nesting spots in the top of the tall timbered interior, plenty of ventilation and exits due to the gap-toothed siding boards, and an almost limitless supply of mice.  The farmhouse too had been built by my grandfather in the ‘20’s and had deep ledges on the outside of each of the many windows.  These were perfect for the resident Barn Owls to sit upon and clean their beaks by rubbing them against the window glass.  If I turned off the room lights, I could get within just a few inches – on the inside of the glass, of course – of the owls’ faces as they rubbed their beaks on the glass, without them startling and flying away.  Often, we would look into each other’s eyes…and I grew to love them for their beauty and their spirits I felt I could feel.

Peter Van Dermark