I’ve been working on a watercolour and collage piece about an encounter with nature I had in my late 30s. I had climbed a mountain and was resting with my back against a rock admiring the view when a Wedgetail Eagle landed just above my head. It had flown up from the other side. As its head came forward over its talons it saw me for the first time and before completely settling, it took off again. It was all over before I even realised that I’d been so close to a wild bird of prey.

My memory is of the sound of the air as it moved from landing to re-launching. It was a sound like a whip cracking. And the size of the talons that filled my vision! Only as it flew away from me did I see what it was.

When I came to work on this painting, I found myself identifying with the Eagle. I imagined its shock as a situation it believed it had scoped out and understood perfectly suddenly became not a moment for rest and planning, but of fear filled flight. Had it too felt shame for its ignorance, for not seeing and then also for not speaking up, not asserting itself in that moment but also not even “after it was all over” as “nothing had happened”… Had it too lost its trust in itself and others not exactly because of what happened but because it was ignored, in the same way that the unexpected event that led to me never having a life partner was?

This is anthropomorphising of course, but there was a lot of catharsis for me in working on this, some of which I hope shows in the “turmoil” of movement in the painting and some perhaps in its unusual execution. There is no “colour plan”. It is not even on one piece of paper. But I am proud of it and so had it framed for my wall.

I enjoy now having this painting for the emotions I worked through when doing it, but also as a window into life events that have shaped me and even as a tool for conversations into my old age.

Like a myth, I hope it can be understood at different levels, according to who is asking and how I feel in relation to them. So, yes, it's a painting of something unusual that happened to me. That is probably enough for most people (with the usual where, what, when and why story elements). But if they are curious enough (perhaps about why there’s a candle in one corner) and ask with care, I have added that the candle represents the danger of having a single point of focus. How this obscures what else is there; who else is there.

Perhaps one day that might lead to someone sharing with me where they have been shocked so that I can witness and companion their regret and shame. Perhaps it might lead to me sharing the story of the biggest shame of my life. But that no longer matters as an outcome to me, because there it is - up on the wall - no longer hidden away in silence. Acknowledgement of what is. And I hope my legacy to myself is to stand tall beside it, because I made this. In every sense of the word.

Susan Dowrie