A new exhibition of Ed Sheeran’s artworks is taking place at Heni Gallery.
The Grammy-winning singer and songwriter began painting in 2019 during downtime between recording sessions and touring.
Last year, he exhibited his brightly-coloured, Pollock-esque paintings in a disused car park.
Prints will be on sale for £900 each, with 50 per cent of funds going to the Ed Sheeran Foundation, which supports music education in state schools and grassroots organisations across the nation.
Which other celebrities have ventured into painting?
What Was (Acrylic)
Lucy Liu
Kill Bill star Lucy Liu began making art when she was a teenager. Growing up in Queens in the 1980s, Liu would wander around the streets of New York City, taking photographs, which she’d use in collages. After doing an intensive class at New York Studio School, she turned to painting, which found to be a more freeing medium.
Bowie Spewing
Paul McCartney
The world-renowned Beatles star has a lesser-known creative outlet: painting. McCartney’s artwork often depicts famous figures, such as David Bowie and Elvis Presley, through acerbic colours and warping shapes.
Jim Carrey has been drawing and painting since childhood. The actor is drawn to vivid colours and abstract figures, often with fierce political undertones, such as his cartoonish depictions of Donald Trump.
Alongside winning multiple Oscars, Anthony Hopkins is also a painter. Working with ink, oil and acrylics, the actor creates vibrantly-coloured artworks, often veering towards distorted faces.
He might be best known for playing James Bond but Pierce Brosnan grew up dreaming of becoming a painter. An alumni of London’s Central St Martins College of Art and Design, Brosnan has created at least 300 artworks. Often depicting psychedelic landscapes, Brosnan has recently ventured into ceramics.
Army Pants (Acryllic on Canvas)
James Franco,artsy.net
Beyond his Hollywood career, James Franco is also a Gucci model, a published poet and a visual artist (as well as holding a PhD from Yale). The two-time Golden Globe winner is drawn to themes of masculinity, celebrity and identity in his multimedia artworks.
“Acting, writing, painting – they all orbit around those ideas for me,” he told Numero Magazine, “It’s about capturing a person – their essence, their transformation.”
The Golden Globe-winning actor Johnny Depp has also embarked on visual art, including a number of self-portraits. Last year, the artist’s work was exhibited at an art gallery in Chelsea, New York, and received mixed critical acclaim. The New York Post described it as “one huge, derivative, delusional ego bath”.
Creativity is in Jemima Kirke’s DNA. The Girls actress is the daughter of a rock musician father and fashion designer mother, a talented household that likely influenced her to pursue painting at Rhode Island School of Design. Her work often gravitates towards portraits of young girls. “My kids are sick of being painted,” Kirke told W Magazine.
Bob Dylan, Halcyon Gallery
Alongside his musical career, Bob Dylan is also a painter, sculptor, filmmaker and author. The Nobel Prize-winning singer has drawn since his childhood in Minnesota, continuing to take inspiration from American cityscapes throughout his life.
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