Ivy’s family reached out to me to honour their faithful companion with a painting. They live in a small Italian village near Rome, where families mark their devotion and gratitude to the animals they share their lives with by having their portraits painted.

I was moved by the thought of these images living quietly inside the village’s homes—each one holding the memory of a particular bond.

My work often begins with the question of how intimacy takes spatial form: how affection comes to inhabit a room, and how a presence becomes part of a place.

Ivy entered this tradition as both a portrait of a beloved animal and a record of the place she holds within her family.