AN ARTIST from Darwen has produced a portrait of guitar legend Jimi Hendrix using 5,000 plectrums.

Ed Chapman was commissioned to make the portrait for Cancer Research UK’s Sound & Vision music heritage event at Abbey Road Studios in London.

He was given the plectrums by guitar maker Fender, whose instruments Hendrix used.

It was unveiled yesterday at the studio made famous by The Beatles Abbey Road album, with a guide price of between £12,000 and £16,000.

At an auction in 2009, Ed’s ceramic portrait of John Lennon raised thousands for the charity.

Ed said: "Jimi Hendrix is a guitar maestro and nobody played a Fender guitar quite like him.

“I decided to use plectrums to create a portrait of him because I like experimenting with different materials and textures and I think it is a fitting tribute to a music legend.

“There’s no better place for it to go on sale than at a legendary home of music and I hope it raises as much as possible for charity.”

The Hendrix mosaic took the 39-year-old artist several days' solid work at his Manchester studio and measures 120cm x 100cm.

Ed has previously created tile mosaics of football heroes Eric Cantona and George Best, and two huge pieces of art made out of coins of Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and the former Manchester City manager Mark Hughes.

He has also created works in coins, glass, mobile phones and sugar cubes and sold work to celebrities from the worlds of TV, music and sport.

He says he prefers working with ceramics because “it’s an updated version of the original materials used in mosaics.”

Who is Ed Chapman?

• Ed is the son of late Darwen artist Margaret Chapman, whose work has seen a surge in popularity in recent years.

• Mrs Chapman, who died in 2000, produced landscape oil paintings of Victorian mill town scenes.

• Ed was brought up in The Vicarage, Hawkshaw Avenue, and attended St Cuthbert’s Primary School, both Darwen.

• He is self-taught, originally working with paper, then moving on to glass, metal, and ceramic tile.

• Ed became a professional artist in 2001 and has exhibited at the Earth Gallery, California, The Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong and Villa del Arte, Barcelona.

• He is influenced by artists such as Chuck Close, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jamie Reid.

• Now recognised as one of the UK’s top mosaic artists and strives to create photo-realistic portraits.

• Much of his work is private commissions. A high-profile client was Motorhead singer Lemmy who wanted a self-portrait for his Hollywood home.