He studied with Sydney Long (1931) and Antonio Dattilo Rubbo (1934–1935), and later in London (1936–1937) at the Westminster School of Art with Mark Gertler and Bernard Meninsky.

During World War II he served as a gunner with the AIF, and while stationed at Albury began a friendship with Russell Drysdale, which led to their joint discovery of Hill End, a quasi-abandoned gold mining village near Bathurst, New South Wales, which in the 1950s became something of an artists' colony.

[3] Friend's critical reputation in the 1940s equalled those of William Dobell and Russell Drysdale, but by the time of his death it had sunk so low that his work was totally absent from the 1988 Australian Bicentennial exhibition, a show meant to include every artist of importance since white settlement.

[citation needed] Despite winning the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 1955, Friend made "no attempt to disguise the homoeroticism which underlay much of his work".

[7] His facility as a draughtsman may have contributed to the undervaluing of his work, which art scholar Lou Klepac said "always looked too easy – decorative, flowing and natural".

It chronicled in half a million words a life peopled with such artists as Drysdale, Margaret Olley, Jeffrey Smart and Brett Whiteley.