Cooper.

What you hang is the portrait: a koala with big furry ears, a wide black nose, looking right at you. I created it head-on and with a plain background: it holds up well from a distance and doesn't fight with whatever's around it. With a frame it carries differently than a loose print: it reads as a piece, with its own border and framing, and it settles the wall instead of just decorating it.

In Cooper's bio you'll find out there's a guy with a job and a town behind that plushie face: he's a presenter on a community radio station on the east coast of Australia. The portrait doesn't tell you any of that; it holds your gaze and that's it.

Here's the fact that surprises almost everyone: the koala is a marsupial, a relative of the kangaroo and the wombat, and its young — the joey — finishes growing up inside a pouch before it faces the world. The whole "koala bear" thing is an old habit, from the round face and the furry ears, but it has nothing of the bear about it. For decades people called it that by mistake.

Cooper is a koala, with his shirt and his calm, one of those who take things slowly. Hung with a frame on a wall, he has just the right presence: when someone walks into the room, the first thing they do is look at him. In Animal Kinhood I portray animals that dress and live like people, with a job and a routine; Cooper is one of them, and this piece pulls him out of his story and puts him in your home, already framed.