Mixed Media on wood, ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

Meet Willow the wombat. I met her on a wintery evening in Cradle Mountain National Park in Tasmania. I've always adored wombats, but I'd never seen one up close before, so when I heard about the tame wombats of Cradle Mountain, I made a beeline for the park.

It was as if Willow was there waiting for me. She was foraging in the button grass, snuffling around as the sun set and a freezing mist rose up from the lake.

I spent a couple of hours hanging out with Willow and photographing her, until darkness descended and I realised my fingers had gone numb. I knew I'd definitely made a friend when I noticed Willow following me back to my car.

I began this artwork with a simple photograph of Willow, which I printed on tissue paper on a specialist large-format printer. I embedded the tissue into a waxed panel, burning multiple layers of wax into the surface with a heat gun and flame torch. I then began carving and adding pigment between the layers and adding texture with a course brush. Finally, I added a small amount of transference wax to pick up the moonlight on the button grass. The finished result, which is museum quality, is highly textured and very tactile - I hope you'll look through the additional photographs, where I've tried to show the richness of the colours and texture.