Rihanna buys Marilyn Monroe portrait by North Yorkshire artist

Rihanna buys Marilyn Monroe portrait by North Yorkshire artist

10:02am Friday 10th February 2012 in

POP star Rihanna has spent tens of thousands of pounds on a giant portrait of Marilyn Monroe made out of 65,000 Swarovski crystals by a North Yorkshire artist.

The star commissioned Claire Milner, based near York, to create the five sq ft picture of the Hollywood icon and then spent thousands of pounds to have it shipped to her home in Beverly Hills.

The portrait, which constantly changes colour, sending rainbows of light round the room, and weighs 13 stone, took six months to complete at Claires studio.

Claire, who was commissioned to produce the piece by Gemstone Creative, made it entirely out of Swarovski crystals. She said: Because of who Rihanna is everything had to be done through her interior decorators, but they told me afterwards she loved it.

Claire, who has done similar portraits of David Beckham and Elvis, did a smaller portrait of Marilyn Monroe which caught the eye of Rihanna in August 2010.

Claire spent months researching Marilyns life in detail to decide which aspects of her personality to showcase.

She said: I wanted to capture some of the complicated and contradictory aspects of Marilyn the glitter and the public facade, and at the same time, the sadness in the eyes.

I wanted people to think about the person behind the headlines when they look at this portrayal, which is not a typical blonde Marilyn it takes a smart brunette to play a dumb blonde.

In October 2010, after researching Marilyns life thoroughly, the! long cr eative work began a process which ended in February 2011.

Claire considers the Swarovski Marilyn one of the highlights of her career so far, partly because of the overwhelmingly positive reactions of those who have seen it, but also because of the number of challenges she had to overcome in order to complete it.

At one stage Claire dislocated her shoulder while moving the portrait, which weighed 53kg before work began and 80kg on completion. Once finished, it took five men to load the piece onto the truck which would eventually take it to Rihannas home.

Claire, whose work has recently been recognised by Dragons Den star Theo Paphitis, and entrepreneur Jacqueline Gold, will be exhibiting some of her recent mixed media animal portraits at the Saltbox Gallery, Helmsley, between March and May.

For more information visit claire-milner.co.uk