Owls are a recurring motif in my work, prompted by an experience of an owl flying straight at me at a significant time in my personal life. This last summer a family of tawny frogmouths spent several days in our peppercorn tree. It felt like a visitation. The title comes from a line in a picture book text I am currently illustrating. The text by Johanna Bell was inspired by Emily Dickinson's poem '"Hope" it the thing with feathers'. This work is a painting from some years ago, which I sanded and scraped back to discover the image waiting to emerge.