Melting Moss featured in exhibition

Artist Stella Vine today unveiled a series of paintings based on supermodel Kate Moss and her fall from grace.

The exhibition is called The Beautiful and the Damned, the title of an F Scott Fitzgerald novel and the theme of Moss’s infamous 30th birthday party last year.

Earlier this year Vine produced a portrait of a smiling Moss next to the words: “I only make love to Jesus.”

This time around, one of her pictures shows the model looking stressed and clutching a cigarette, her face melting, with the slogan: “Holy water cannot help you now.”

In another she is pictured hanging out of a window at the Priory clinic, where she spent six weeks in 1998, while boyfriend Pete Doherty waves at her from the grounds.

Vine created the pictures during the fall-out from the model’s recent cocaine scandal.

“It was the height of everything that was happening to Kate and I felt the coverage was going overboard, with everyone writing her off and saying her career was over,” the artist said.

“In the painting her face is disintegrating, which represents what she was going through. But Kate is amazingly strong and in another of my pictures she has a really defiant look in her eyes.”

Vine, a former stripper, likened herself to Moss.

“I’m an old-fashioned spirit, just like Kate, except she lives this glamorous, decadent life – I just think of it,” she said.

The exhibition opens tomorrow at a London gallery and also includes a painting of the Rolling Stones.

Vine hit the headlines when her painting of a bloodied Diana, Princess of Wales was snapped up by art collector Charles Saatchi.

She recently sold another Diana painting to singer George Michael for a reported £25,000. Inspired by the conspiracy surrounding her death, it bore the words: “Murdered? Pregnant? Embalmed?”

Her other subjects have included Abi Titmuss, Liz Taylor and Lassie.

In February an exhibition of her work will open at a gallery in Dallas, Texas, owned by George Michael’s boyfriend Kenny Goss.

:: The Beautiful and the Damned is at Hiscox Art Projects, 1 Great St Helens, London EC3 from November 24 to January 21.