Taryn Everdeen

I met Taryn the way everyone meets Taryn. Unexpectedly.

I was at her mother's house taking photos to paint someone else. We ended up in the living room, jamming and singing together. We've been friends ever since.

I've watched her move through rooms, cracking people wide open with her offbeat energy, awkward in a way that makes others comfortable. Loving fully and unconditionally. 

Her friendship has been one of the greatest lessons of my life. She formed the architecture in which I live and shared a love with me that opened up the world.

I surrounded her in this painting with the people she feels safest with. Who exist in each other's lives because of her. Zoe, Antheme, Phelim and myself, sewn together by the simple fact of her. 

I knew the painting was finished when her neighbour, eight year old Evie, looked at it and asked me why I had painted Taryn as an angel. 

Taryn, a girl who holds magic. Indefinable, like the scent of a flower, or the experience of colour .There are truths we can’t touch, only gesture toward through language or by making art.

And so I have made this for her.

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