Art can take on many forms and we dare say Australian Tim Patch has an interesting way of applying paint to canvas. He uses his private parts. That’s right. He uses his personal instrument as a brush and is pulling out all of the stops in an attempt to win Australia’s Archibald art prize with a racy portrait of himself.
He calls himself Pricasso, and takes his show on the road, appearing at sex product fairs around the world. He uses his bare backside to apply paint to the background of each portrait in order to rest his paint brush. He is apparently the master of the 20 minute masterpiece. He videos the process and includes a tape with each painting as proof that the special method of paint application is authentic.
He entered a penile painted portrait (try saying that 10 times fast) in last year’s contest for the Archibald Prize but the judges weren’t impressed. That painting was of a plastic surgeon acquaintance. This year’s entry is a self portrait in which Patch is wearing only a hat and is clutching a blank canvas over his ‘paint brush’.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales anticipates 700 entries in the contest, all vying for the 2008 Archibald Prize. Finalists will be announced in March.