Black and White Portrait Painting, Original Acrylic and Ink Mustache Man, 16x20
The Detective is an original black and white portrait painting by independent artist Markus Lewis, made for walls that like their drama in a single color. There’s no color to hide behind. A man with a handlebar mustache, two days of beard, ears sticking out, and a neck like a fence post is drawn in a heavy black contour that’s sure of itself. His eyes aren’t. They slide sideways, wary, under brows set like a closed door.
Around him the gray washes run and drip straight down the canvas. On the left, “1921” is stenciled vertically next to a stack of Deco line work that reads like a blueprint, or a city skyline taken apart. At his shoulder the line gives up and becomes scribble.
1921 is the threshold: Prohibition just starting, the cities getting crooked, and Dashiell Hammett about to quit the Pinkertons to write about men like this. He’s the guy whose job is to see everything and give nothing back. The outline is all certainty, and the paint underneath is leaking. That’s the case he’s really working: holding a clean shape together while the evidence runs down the wall.
The piece measures 16" x 20" x 0.5" and is painted in acrylic and ink on canvas. It is a one-of-a-kind original, not a print, signed by the artist.
