Olwen.

In her story, Olwen states the price once and won't lower it, and sometimes that costs her dearly. With a farmer from the bottom of the valley she had a price argument in which exactly two sentences too many got said, one from each of them; neither has taken theirs back, and they've gone three winters without speaking. She knows it, she knows what it costs her, and still she won't pick up the phone. The portrait tells none of that: it only shows her calm, forward-facing look. The rest is in her biography.

Olwen is one of the characters from Animal Kinhood, my series of animals with clothes and a trade; in her case, a hare who lays living hedges by hand in the Welsh interior. Framed, she has just the right presence for an entryway or a hallway you pass through, without clashing with whatever's around it. I created her facing forward against a plain background: she settles a wall rather than cluttering it. If you like how it looks, you'll find the whole series — also available framed — in the rest of the collection.