He Paid For Her Bus

He Paid for Her Bus is a large-scale pink painting depicting a boy and a sparrow. The work explores adolescence as a period of inner growth and emerging independence. The sparrow functions as a metaphor for the idiom,’ spread your wings’, echoing the subject’s transition toward autonomy.

The boy’s head is painted disproportionately larger than his body to heighten the presence of his skinhead and to foreground an aggressive attitude often read onto his appearance. This distortion amplifies the tension between how he is perceived and who he reveals himself to be. The painting is structured around visual and conceptual dichotomies: the use of pink in relation to a hoodie-wearing teenager; the fragile bird positioned against the image of a skinhead; and the title itself, which suggests tenderness and moral awareness in contrast to the subject’s outward appearance.

The subject is a real person from my life, depicted as he appears. The title refers to a specific moment in which he paid for a girl’s bus fare when she was in a vulnerable situation. Through this work, I aim to represent youth with honesty and complexity, resisting stereotypes and allowing softness, kindness, and contradiction to coexist.

This painting is oil on canvas and measures 150cm x 95cm, unframed.