Andrew Cowdell, The Terrible Beauty of a Winter's Day, 2016

Andrew Cowdell, The Terrible Beauty of a Winter's Day, oil on linen

With only the corvids for company and little in the way of sunshine, the terrible beauty in my surroundings inspired the subject and title to this monochrome oil painting. The corvids I have painted are specifically rooks, which are still often spoken of under the general term ‘crow’. Many times have I observed these eccentric and ragged birds as they twist and tumble through the skies above their communal roosts in the woods. However, once out across the fields these rooks adopt a steady undeviating flight as they commute to their feeding grounds. It may be to rooks that the old saying ‘as the crow flies’ refers.

In the following extract James Thomson relates his meeting with rooks during a bygone winter:

See, Winter comes to rule the varied year,

Sullen and sad, with all his rising train—

Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,

These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought

And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!

…But chief the plumy race,

The tenants of the sky, its changes speak.

Retiring from the downs, where all day long

They pick’d their scanty fare, a black’ning train

Of clamorous rooks thick-urge their weary flight,

And seek the closing shelter of the grove.

from The Seasons: Winter

by James Thomson, 1700-1748