Hairy art

Most artists either buy ready-mixed paint, or perhaps powdered pigment and binder and mix it themselves. But artist Amikam Toren likes to create a closer, more material connection between the paint and the objects he's painting.

He's mixed bits of ground china teapot with acrylic binder and used it to paint a teapot ,and mixed pulped leather and binder to make gestural paintings of gloves - even applying the paint to the canvas directly with his hands.

But, most notably, for the past five years Toren has been making a series of paintings with bits of his own beard. Collecting his facial shavings every day for three months, Toren then mixes them with binder and uses the browny-grey results to cover a canvas the same size as the mirror he uses to shave with. Labelling each painting with its three-month period, Toren often also adds details of events that have happened to him during that time.

What started out as his own take on self-portraiture has also now become his own personal comment on the passage of time. A selection of these paintings will go on show for the first time in this country. Amikam Toren: Bluebeard, from Fri 28 Jun, Jeffrey Charles Gallery, 34 Settles Street, E1 (07930 396 671).