The message arrived at midnight.

I was in my Shanghai studio, cleaning brushes, half-listening to some old Cantonese pop songs my grandmother used to play. The email subject line was just two words: "For Mochi."

The body was longer. A woman in Singapore, crying as she typed, telling me about her 17-year-old Shih Tzu who'd crossed the Rainbow Bridge that morning. "I don't know why I'm writing," she said. "I just... I need someone to know who he was. Not just that he existed, but who he was."

I wrote back immediately. Not because I had a sales pitch ready—I didn't. But because I've been there.

Twelve years ago, sitting in my tiny London flat, I got the call that my childhood dog in Hong Kong had passed. I couldn't fly home. Couldn't say goodbye. Couldn't do anything except sit there with a shoebox of photos and a grief so heavy I couldn't breathe.

So I painted him.

It wasn't good—not by my current standards. The proportions were wrong, the colours muddy, the expression slightly off. But something happened while I painted. The grief didn't disappear, but it... shifted. It became something I could hold instead of something that was holding me.

That's when I understood what memorial art is really for.

The Hong Kong Way of Grieving

In Hong Kong, we have a saying: 思念是一種很玄的東西 (Si nian shi yi zhong hen xuan de dong xi). Longing is a mysterious thing. It means missing someone isn't just sadness—it's presence. The person you've lost is still there, in the spaces between moments, in the habits you can't break, in the places they used to sit.

We don't try to "move on" from grief. We learn to carry it.

A memorial portrait is a way of carrying. Not a replacement for the one you've lost—nothing can replace them. But a container. A place for all that love to live, visible and real, instead of floating formless in your chest.

I've painted dozens of memorial portraits over the years, and every single one follows the same arc. The client contacts me in raw grief—days, weeks, sometimes years after the loss. They send photos. They tell stories. They apologize for crying on the phone (I always tell them: I'm crying too). Then, weeks later, they receive the finished piece.

And something shifts.

"I didn't realize how much I needed to see her," one client wrote. "Not a photo—I have thousands of photos. But to see her. To have her looking at me again."

What Makes a Memorial Portrait Different

Technically, a memorial portrait uses the same materials, the same techniques, the same attention to detail. But emotionally? Everything is different.

When I'm painting a memorial piece, I'm acutely aware that this is it. There are no more photos to take. No more moments to observe. This one painting has to carry the weight of an entire life.

That pressure changes how I work.

I spend more time on the consultation, asking questions I might not ask otherwise. What was their morning routine? What sound would make them come running? What's the one memory you find yourself reaching for when you miss them most?

The answers guide everything. The angle of the head. The expression in the eyes. The quality of light .

I painted a memorial for a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Poppy last year, and the detail that broke me was this: "She used to rest her head on my pillow every morning and just watch me wake up. Just... watched. For ten minutes. Every single day."

In the final portrait, Poppy's head is tilted slightly downward, her eyes soft and focused on something just below the viewer. Not looking at you—looking for you. The client told me later that she wakes up every morning, sees that painting, and feels watched over again.

The London Training

At the University of the Arts London, we studied something called "memento mori"—the artistic tradition of remembering death. Victorian mourning portraits, Renaissance tomb sculptures, those strange Victorian photographs of deceased loved ones posed as if still alive.

morbid stuff, right? But the lesson wasn't about death. It was about life. About the human need to keep our loved ones present, even after they're gone .

My professor used to say: "We don't paint the dead. We paint the love that survives them."

That stuck with me. When I paint a memorial portrait, I'm not painting a corpse—I'm painting the aliveness that still lives in everyone who knew them. The joy. The warmth. The specific, unrepeatable way they existed in the world.

The Shanghai Light

There's something about Shanghai that makes memorial art feel natural.

This city is built on layers—old and new, living and remembered. Walk through the French Concession and you'll see century-old plane trees shading boutiques that didn't exist five years ago. The past isn't buried here. It's visible, present, part of everyday life.

That's how memorial portraits should feel. Not hidden away in a drawer, not brought out only on anniversaries. Hung on the wall, visible every day, part of the family. The past, present, alive.

I had a client in Pudong whose cat had passed two years before she commissioned the portrait. When the painting arrived, she hung it in her living room, right next to a photo of her human grandparents. "They're all family," she said. "Why should the cat be separate?"

Exactly.

Choosing the Photo (The Hardest Part)

This is where clients struggle most. They have hundreds of photos—how do you choose one to become the one?

My advice: don't choose the "best" photo. Choose the truest one.

The photo that makes you feel something when you look at it. The one where they're doing something ordinary—sleeping, waiting, looking out a window—but doing it in a way that was uniquely theirs .

I had a client send me 23 options for her late greyhound. The one we used was technically terrible—blurry, badly lit, taken on an old phone. But in that photo, he was doing the "greyhound roach"—curled up with his back legs tucked under, looking like a giant shrimp. It was his signature move. Every greyhound owner knows it. And in that imperfect photo, he was more himself than in any of the professional shots.

Trust your gut. If a photo makes you smile through the tears, that's the one.

The Materials of Forever

This matters more for memorial portraits than any other commission.

When I paint a memorial piece, I use the absolute best materials I can source. German museum-grade pigments tested for lightfastness—they won't fade or yellow for at least a century . Belgian linen, not cotton—the weave is tighter, more stable, less likely to warp over time. Professional varnishes that protect against UV and dust.

Why? Because this painting needs to outlast you. It needs to be there for your children, your grandchildren, the generations who never got to meet this animal but will know them through your stories and this image .

A memorial portrait isn't just for now. It's for always.

For Those Who Aren't Ready

If you're reading this and your pet is still with you, good. Go find them. Give them a squeeze.

But also consider this: memorial portraits don't have to wait until after.

I've painted plenty of pieces for pets who are very much alive, and those commissions are joyful in a different way. The client gets to see their pet celebrated while they're still here to appreciate it. The pet gets to be present for their own tribute (though they usually just nap through it, unimpressed).

There's no wrong time to honour a relationship. Only wrong timing—and that's never doing it at all .

The Call I Still Remember

That woman in Singapore who emailed me at midnight about her Shih Tzu Mochi? She did commission the portrait. We worked together for weeks, choosing photos, sharing stories, building something worthy of a 17-year friendship.

When the portrait arrived, she sent me a voice note. I've kept it saved on my phone for two years.

"He's home," she said, her voice breaking but somehow also smiling. "He's finally home."

That's what I do. Not art. Homecoming.