Billy takes me straight back to childhood. We always had birds growing up, including budgies. They started out in cages inside before Dad built them an aviary, so birds, wild and not, have always been part of my life.

I love Billy's expression. He's not posing. He's watching. There's an alertness in that eye, as though he's taking everything in and could be gone in a flutter of blue at any moment.

Wild budgerigars are naturally green and yellow; the beautiful blues we know as pets came through selective breeding. You wouldn't normally see a blue budgie in the Australian wild unless an escaped pet had found its way there.

Billy is both. Beloved and wild. Tame enough to sit still. Free enough to vanish.

Acrylic and oil on canvas · 20 × 20 cm (8 × 8") · Original

Painted from a reference photograph by Shutterstock.