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There is a reason we flinch from what we don't understand. The Tasmanian Devil has long been cast as ugly, aggressive, difficult - a being defined by her scream rather than her complexity. This portrait refuses that diminishment. Here she is, equally wide-mouthed and unapologetic in her bite-force, and equally demure and dare we say it, cute, her presence asking us to sit with our own discomfort about that dichotomy. She is not performing tameness for us. In choosing to paint these three expressions together - all noise, all dark fire and white flash - I wanted to offer them the same reverential gaze we reserve for more "beautiful" subjects. To see them clearly is to see something ancient and tenacious, worthy of far more than our fear or disdain.
