Angela Brennan, Portrait of Geoff Lowe as Sergeant Pepper, 1992, oil on canvas with plastic camera, 167.00 x 121.00 x 7.00 cm, TCG23645
Collection: Monash University

Portraits and other figurative paintings have featured alongside Angela Brennan’s abstract paintings throughout her career. Portrait of Geoff Lowe as Sergeant Pepper, 1992, is one of a series that she made for her 1992 exhibition at 200 Gertrude Street. At the time, Brennan was artist-in-residence at Ormond College, The University of Melbourne, with a studio on the top floor of McCaughey Court. She invited Lowe to sit for a portrait and explains how he came to be painted in George Harrison’s costume from the well-known album cover for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967): Geoff hired the Sergeant Pepper costume for a painting project he had underway at A Constructed World. I liked the look of Geoff in the colour orange with his black hair! For me in respect of portraiture there always has to be a kind of magnetism of certain abstract elements, for example form, colour, that the subject has about them whether it is apparent in their personal style or the organisation of their physical features.

—text from Monash University Museum of Art website