Let’s start with my social media quotation:

“Face with Gold Mouth” began as charcoal lines in mostly abstract forms. Shapes primarily. The drawing took me about 20 minutes.

I photographed the drawing at 2101hrs immediately, deciding what to do next.

The entire acrylic painting was then finished in an incredible one hour fourteen seconds, timed. I quickly started photographing. The image you see here is from a photograph I selected at 2207hrs, the paint still gleaming wet.

I do feel it is a very unique artwork for one hour fourteen seconds of painting.”

Picasso and Van Gogh are my main influences here.

The ivory black paint around the outer area I kept very accurate to the drawing. There is no brushwork whatsoever. I decided to improvise with the actual painting. Only restoring the idea for eyes, mouth and nose ‘later‘ in my working.

later within the hour of course.

The dachshund shape is complete chance. This delighted me immediately after making the drawing. I knew I needed to retain this in the painting. With wet paint heavy on the paper I quickly referred to my photograph of the drawing to place the eyes and nose, stylistically.

I noted the triangular area looked wonderful for the mouth. So much fun to produce. Likewise the ivory black area, the etched lines my own Van Gogh emulation seen in a number of sketches (with pencils and/or ink) I’ve produced of trees.

After completing the piece I originally envisaged the title “Face with Dog Tree”! However two reasons I decided upon “Face with Gold Mouth”.

Firstly, my mother specifically commented ‘it has a gold mouth’. Also, I thought it would be interesting for viewers to see the idea of a dachshund/dog for themselves. Particularly as this element was unplanned.

The ‘mouth teeth‘ at the top is the original charcoal from the drawing. It was pure spontaneity. Immediately it reminded me of a music industry friend.

You can even see a charcoal line did not get overpainted on the head above the eyes too.

Here is the charcoal drawing:

I never viewed this as a self portrait then or now. The abstract face was made without any thought to resemble or represent anyone in particular.

Some days later reading the earliest introduction of this [portrait] person’s life.. I knew it would be ridiculous for me to pretend this painting could be of any other person.

It’s strange a randomly made abstract-like painting could become a certain, unique human being. Unique enough for others to intellectualise.

By the way, I thought you might like to see the timer for this painting work: