Famous Musicians’ Fascinating Self-Portraits

By Tom Hawking

November 29, 2012

We were interested to see that a series of self-portraits by David Bowie had sold at auction for £6,500 earlier this week. The self-portraits in question date from the 1990s, a decade during which Bowie’s painting efforts were apparently particularly prolific, but he studied art in high school and has always moonlighted as a painter. He’s not the only one, of course — many musicians also pursue other artistic avenues, from Nick Zinner with his photography to Captain Beefheart and his weird, abstract paintings. We thought it’d be interesting to look at other musical self-portraits, so we’ve pulled together a gallery of such paintings after the jump. They’re rather fascinating insights into how some of our musicians see themselves — so if you’ve ever wanted to see Paul Simonon as a skeleton, or Nick Cave’s, um, equipment, then click on through.