Where Are the Boys?

My client in Melbourne sent me pictures of her two daughters and told me all about them and her family.

One of the questions I always ask when I am making a painting like this is, what is something you always say when you are together? Something that makes it identifiable as just you, or just you and the girls, or your friends when you all get together. She answered straight away. We are always saying, where are the boys? The boys are her husband and their two sons.

So in the painting the girls are all out for a lovely meal together, and I added the waiter serving the bill, which made the question, and the title of the painting, rather apt.

The background was actually red when I first painted it. Ten years later Jill got in touch to ask whether I could change it for her, because they had totally redecorated and the whole colour scheme had changed. She sent me photographs of the new furniture and colours, the painting travelled up to the Sunshine Coast, I reworked it, and it went back to Melbourne. It has been a special painting in this family.