SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Tim Patch is an Australian artist with a unique approach to his work. While the vast majority of painters prefer to use their hands and fingers when bringing their mental pictures to life, others, either from caprice or necessity, refine their art to accommodate more non-traditional body parts. Most common are toes and mouths, each of which can grip a paintbrush and be trained to do fine work. Patch has selected an even more non-traditional body part: his penis.Billing himself as “Pricasso,” Patch uses his multi-talented willy to create a wide assortment of portraits, including a nude self-portrait featuring himself with a hat on his head and a blank canvas strategically shielding his fleshly painting instrument. It is this work, created by applying paint to canvas with his dick, which Patch has submitted to Archibald Prize committee.

Although last year’s committee for the ultimate prize in Australian portraiture was not impressed by his depiction of a plastic surgeon, also produced by cock brush, Patch hopes that his latest work will get a warmer reception.

Patch, whose work traditionally appears at sex product shows throughout the globe, admits that it’s not always his family jewels that do all the hard work. “I had to use my bum to paint in the background,” he explained to the Sydney Morning Herald about his self-portrait, “because you have to have the occasional break.”

More than 700 portraits are anticipated to vie for the 2008 Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. Winners will be announced in March.