«NOTHING»

The face on the one-dollar bill comes from a portrait that was never finished. Gilbert Stuart began painting George Washington in 1796, left the canvas unfinished, kept it, and painted dozens of replicas from it. Every one-dollar bill carries a face its painter never completed. That is the starting point of my george washington pop art.

I called the painting NOTHING, because the bills in his hands are worth exactly what we agree they are worth.

Washington's hair is built from thick white paint you can almost pinch. His face is sliced into strips that drift out of line, and dark brown drips run from the cut down the chest. He wears a white sweatshirt covered in fashion-brand logos, with a crown, stars, hearts and a ball scribbled between them like a teenager's notebook. In both hands he holds a plate piled with one-dollar bills. The background is gold, with raised outlines, thin black price lines labelled BTC, Brent, CNY and ETH, and a few dark red and blue blocks.

Warhol returned to the dollar sign in 1981 and painted it again and again. Banksy made his own bank notes with Princess Diana's face on them in 2004 and called them Di-Faced Tenners. Basquiat drew crowns over the heads of his heroes in the early 1980s, and the crown on the sweatshirt is my small tribute to that habit. Klimt used gold in The Kiss in 1907 and 1908, and I used it to make a cheap logo look like treasure.

This george washington pop art original is oil and acrylic on canvas, 120x90 cm. It is contemporary pop art, and it works as art for office walls, where money gets discussed all day. It also sits well next to nosreffeJ samohT, which shares the same gold field and market lines.

Most of my original paintings are already in private collections, but I paint originals to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email. A hand-finished lithograph of this work also exists, and you can order it through Instagram or email.