Oil on canvas

The painting appears as Item E in the exhibition list with the caption:

This person is physically handicapped, he is not mentally handicapped.

Lenkiewicz referenced the so-called ‘character heads’ of the eighteenth-century German–Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) for his Self-Portrait (after Franz Xaver Messerschmidt) (1976).

The painting appears as Item A in the exhibition list with the caption:

This person is “NORMAL”. He/She is not mentally handicapped. Price: £Very expensive but always available at a price.

Shown at the 1996 exhibition of restored and reworked paintings on the theme of vagrancy. 29 January–30 April 1996, The Annexe, 19 Citadel Ope, The Barbican, Plymouth.

‘What you see is nothing, the head manufactures the world.
It takes a lunatic to find out what is really going on. You are now talking to a lunatic, sir! A lunatic is someone who takes an interest in something no one else takes an interest in. For the rest there is no escape.’
Albert Fisher, known as ‘Bishop’, a vagrant

‘We’re all vagrants in the sense that we’re not here to stay.’
Terry Goldstone, political activist

This painting was given by the artist as a gift to the Lord Mayor of Plymouth, but it was promptly returned after the subject matter was understood. Lenkiewicz said of 'The Bishop in 1997: "He’d arrange himself as neatly as a parson when he sat down saying, 'Always keep the creases in your trousers. Don’t shit ‘em or that’ll have the creases out!' He’d say it almost like clockwork as he folded himself up, even if he was only sitting down for a minute."