When my old friend Andrew’s name appeared in my email inbox, I was thrilled to hear from him. When he mentioned that he was interested in commissioning a painting from me, I was overjoyed.
Andrew and I go way back, to D&D sessions at his house in the early 1990s with our mutual friends. He was a Dragon Rider and I was a Magician. His mum would come in with orange squash for us all while we launched ourselves into the latest challenge facing our party.
Time seems to have accelerated every year since those sessions, and I often reminisce about them. In the early years of the new millennium, Andrew moved away from the UK to Japan.
The truth is that once family life takes over, it can be difficult enough to stay in touch with friends around the corner, let alone friends on the other side of the planet. So Andrew’s message was very welcome — and not just for the friendly banter that inevitably resumes whenever we do occasionally meet or chat.
This time, he was trusting me with something quite significant.
Andrew’s daughter was born in 2007. She was one of the first children born into our old friendship group and we were all thrilled for him. I wasn't in a position to visit — and, shamefully, I have still yet to make it to Japan — but Andrew’s parents travelled to Tokyo to meet their new granddaughter.
It would be many years before they were able to visit again. Sadly, Andrew’s mum died in 2022.
Andrew had taken a series of photographs during that first visit and kindly shared them with me. He had already picked out the one he thought would make the best painting.
I looked through the others and made preliminary drawings from several of them, exploring different possibilities. In the end, I came to the conclusion that Andrew had chosen exactly the right one.
It captures a beautiful moment between two grandparents and their new granddaughter. But there's something else important about it too: Andrew is there, even though you can't see him. He's behind the camera, looking at his parents holding his daughter.
The finished painting is called First Visit. It seemed the simplest and most fitting title for a moment that, with the passing of time, has taken on far more significance than anyone could have known when the photograph was taken.
Thankfully, Andrew is patient, because the painting took considerably longer than I expected.
I wanted to get it right.
The likenesses were obviously important, but more important to me was the connection between the three people in the painting — and, in a less visible way, their connection with Andrew behind the camera.
I kept working. The clothes, the teeth, the hair, the background, the colours. Small changes accumulated until eventually everything began to belong together.
Finally, I reached a point where I felt ready to show Andrew the work in progress.
He was over the moon.
So I was over the moon.
There was still some work to do. I made final adjustments, allowed parts of the painting to settle, and then gave myself a generous amount of reflection time over the summer. Eventually, there was nothing left that I genuinely wanted to change.
So it's done.
Photographs aren't neutral records of our lives. We decide when to take them, what to point the camera towards, which ones to keep and, years later, which ones still matter.
Paintings are even less neutral.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this as my own sight has deteriorated. Increasingly, my paintings begin with photographs of people, places and moments that I don't want to lose. Painting them isn't simply a way of reproducing what the camera recorded. It's another act of looking, selecting and remembering.
This particular photograph belongs to Andrew, not me. It's a significant moment in his life, connecting his parents with the family he was beginning thousands of miles away from where we grew up.
I was genuinely honoured that he let me into it.
Now I just need to work out how to deliver it.
I hear autumn in Tokyo is rather nice…
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