P., oil on cardboard, 40 x 30 cm, 1994

1994 I painted P., a friend's friend and junkie who used to come to our squatted house in Rotterdam. I remember him telling me then that he used to take heroin and coke at the same time, so that his pupils would neither widen nor contract, because then his girlfriend, a nurse, wouldn’t find out about his drug abuse.
At the time I painted him, he obviously only took the drug that narrowed he pupils. To my surprise, he liked the painting very much. Probably it was heroin.
#realism