Best Friends

The Guardian is about protection. This one is about the other half of the same relationship, which is that they are ridiculous together.

Best Friends paints the moment rather than the arrangement: the child on the grass with both arms round the dog, both of them mid-laugh, the dog's mouth open in a happy pant, neither of them looking at the camera because neither of them is thinking about a camera. It is the photograph every parent tries to take on a phone and never quite gets, because by the time the phone is out the moment has finished.

The paint gives it something a snapshot cannot. Contemporary painterly realism, visible brushwork, bright late-afternoon summer light, the garden behind dissolved into loose green so nothing competes with the two faces. Warmth without sentimentality. It is a happy picture that does not tip over into a greeting card.

It is the everyday version of the family portrait: cheaper to live with emotionally than the formal ones, easier to hang in a kitchen or a playroom, and the one children themselves ask to keep.

It works for any dog with an expressive face, and it works best when the reference photo of your child is a genuinely happy one rather than a school portrait, because the expression carries straight through into the painting.