When an Animal Arrives: The Story Behind The Eyes of the Messenger
Oil painting of a fox and woman meeting in silence, surrounded by soft spiritual light
There is a difference between seeing an animal and feeling one arrive.
Some encounters move through our lives lightly, a glance, a moment, a passing shape in the landscape. Others carry weight without heaviness. They settle into the air around us. They pause us. They feel purposeful, even if we cannot explain why.
I have always trusted those moments.
The Eyes of the Messenger was painted from that place, the place where an animal does not rush in or retreat, but stands quietly, allowing something unspoken to pass between us.
A fox and woman sit in stillness and recognition
In the painting, a fox meets a woman in stillness. She lowers her gaze rather than reaching forward. The fox remains alert, present, unafraid. Neither moves to claim the moment. They allow it to be what it is.
Between them, light gathers.
Not as spectacle.
Not as declaration.
But as recognition.
I believe animals arrive when something in us is ready to soften.
Ready to notice.
Ready to listen inwardly.
Ready to accept a truth that does not need words.
This belief has followed me since childhood, shaped by rescue animals, wild visitors, and quiet encounters that changed the direction of my life without announcing themselves. Over time, these moments have woven themselves into my paintings as golden threads, subtle at first, barely visible, forming connections before the mind has time to interfere.
A close up detail of the fox’s eye in the painting The Eyes of the Messenger
The fox in this work stands as a messenger not because she performs an action, but because she is one.
Her gaze carries attention rather than instruction.
Her stillness holds invitation rather than command.
The Eyes of the Messenger belongs to the earliest movements in my larger body of work, the paintings where animals first arrive as guides, before paths are mapped and before journeys are named.
These are origin moments.
The ones we look back on years later and realise everything changed quietly that day.
