Batman and Joker's Faces Merged in Acrylic — Print & Oil Painting

Behind the head the artist has laid in three colour fields and left them frankly unblended: deep blue down the left side, a smoky red across the upper right, a slab of yellow ochre in the bottom right corner. Every brush mark is visible, the canvas weave shows through in places, and the raw edge of the support is included at the top.

The face divides down the middle. The left half is the cowl, painted in greys and blacks with a white eye slit and one pointed ear. The right half is the Joker: skin in warm pink and ivory, green hair standing up in loose strokes, a green eye ringed in red, and a scarred red mouth that carries on across the centre line into the cowled side.

Because it is acrylic worked at speed, the two halves are not equally finished, and that is part of the pleasure. The cowl is built from flat opaque shapes; the Joker's cheek is scumbled, layered, scratched back into. One side is a mask, the other is skin, and the paint says so before the drawing does.

Where the picture ends, a green collar and a dark shoulder plate meet without explanation, the last place where the two costumes refuse to resolve. From our DC Universe collection. The fractured split face performs the same operation with digital precision, and the green-lettered crop pushes right up against it.