Some time ago, there was this family from overseas who came to live in Bendigo for a few years, for work. Brian became friends with them, and they were quite impressed with Brian’s artistic abilities that in 2017, a year before they left Australia, they commissioned Brian to do a portrait of them. But they had a unique, but lovely, concept – they wanted to be painted looking like enjoying the beauty of Bendigo and not looking straight at the beholder of the painting (like most portraits).

This family portrait is actually a combination of a few photos – various photos of the family members (which we snatched from the parents’ social media accounts, with permission, of course), and one of the many photos of Rosalind Park in Bendigo which Brian’s amateur photographer wife, Heart, took on one fine afternoon. The playful magpies had to be there in the portrait, a special request of the client.

The result was this beautiful acrylic painting, which the family was very pleased with. They had it locally framed, and proudly hung it in the living area of their Bendigo home for some months, before they took it with them when they finally moved back to their home country.