A portrait he painted of his father shortly before his father's death inspired Dunedin artist Lew Walsh to stick with portraiture, and his interest in music and pop culture inspired him to take it somewhere a little different.
''With my father's portrait, it outlasted him and I thought: `This is going to outlast me'.
''It sparked my interest in portraiture, and continues to do so.''
Walsh, who took up artistic painting about seven years ago, had his first exhibition at the weekend as part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival.
The exhibition, titled ''Ex-Cons and Icons'', includes some of his more unusual and involved portraits of famous Dunedin musicians, as well as pieces he has painted live in two-hour sessions around Dunedin during the festival.
Walsh said he got the idea of speed-painting live in public from YouTube clips, and found the experience of painting fast and in situations where the artist interacts with the public ''scary'' but great and was pleased with the work he had produced.
The exhibition appeared in Dunedin's Community Gallery over the weekend.
It featured Dunedin musicians, including Chris Knox (Toy Love), Shayne Carter (Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer) and Tristan Dingemans (HDU, Mountaineater), in a series of works of their faces created using hundreds of words that both described and formed the subject.
Walsh, who has been involved in the music scene since the 1990s, playing in bands in Dunedin and Auckland, said he had been building up a portfolio of images of family, friends and local personalities.
Portraiture satisfied his love of drawing and painting, his social nature and his interest in culture, pop-culture and the ''coloured past'' of some of the people who influenced and interested him over the years.
He had no formal art training, although he studied design and had always been interested in graphic novels and looking at art.
