Noel Fielding sells Ed Sheeran portrait for almost £1,000 and the resemblance is uncanny

Artist and comedian recently featured on Grayson Perry’s ‘The Art Club’

Noel Fielding made a portrait of Ed Sheeran (Rex)

Noel Fielding has sold a portrait of Ed Sheeran for almost £1,000 at a virtual art exhibition.

The comedian and TV host produced a number of portraits of famous faces as this month’s guest artist for The Other Art Fair's Online Studios in partnership with the Saatchi Gallery, including The Sex Pistols and Michael Jackson. Each of his 18 works went on sale for £912 each.

The portrait of Sheeran was made in yellow and orange crayon, with two black dots for eyes.

Fielding also completed a version of Sir Peter Blake’s iconic cover of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album, and his “self-portrait”, which was a drawing of a star-studded boot.

The gallery said: “Noel Fielding’s artworks bridge seamlessly the imagined worlds and counterculture references we have been led through, courtesy of The Mighty Boosh and Luxury Comedy.

“Drawing on surrealism, dada and neo-expressionism, Noel’s body of work treats us to a feast of colour and a trip through the triangle window into his soul.”

Noel Fielding’s portrait of Ed Sheeran (Saatchi Gallery)

Fielding said of his work: “The characters I paint are often fantastical, usually half human half animal, strange magical beasts who roam my subconscious. It’s the same in my comedy – I’d rather play Old Gregg, a transexual Merman, than someone who exists in real life.

“Acid Mouse is one of the characters I’ve painted a lot in the past year. He is a strange 7ft upright mouse with no arms, and breasts – he speaks through his tits and has shoes made from melted bubblegum and broken pieces of the American dream.”

Fielding recently made a number of appearances on Grayson Perry’s The Art Club, where he took the audience through the work he has produced during lockdown.

The portrait sale comes after Fielding’s comedy sketch show The Mighty Boosh was pulled from Netflix, apparently over its use of the character The Spirit of Jazz, the ghost of fictional jazz musician Howlin’ Jimmy Jefferson.

Fielding wears blackface to portray the character. He appears in three separate forms over the series.