Fresh from his retirement concert with Black Sabbath at the weekend, Ozzy Osbourne has announced a new project: a visual art collaboration with chimpanzees.
Osbourne is a keen amateur painter, and for his latest works he painted multicoloured base coats on to five canvases, with the chimpanzees then adding daubs of their own.
The finished abstract expressionist works are being sold at auction to raise money for Save the Chimps, a sanctuary in Florida for chimpanzees who have been rescued from animal testing labs, poorly run zoos and wildlife traffickers.
“I paint because it gives me peace of mind, but I don’t sell my paintings,” Osbourne said. “I’ve made an exception with these collaborations as it raises money for Save the Chimps.” His wife Sharon Osbourne added: “Chimps are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, and I’m really proud of Ozzy for helping look after them.”
Osbourne is now settling into retirement, having concluded his performing career in spectacular style on Saturday night.
He performed two sets at the conclusion of farewell concert Back to the Beginning, first solo, then with the reunited Black Sabbath. “It’s so good to be on this fucking stage, you have no idea,” he told the crowd, performing seated in a giant bat-adorned throne. “I’ve been laid up for six years, and you’ve got no idea how I feel … Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Osbourne has suffered a series of health problems in recent years. He was diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s, and then had numerous surgeries on his neck and spine after a fall in 2019. He also suffered pneumonia, and an infection that required him to remain on antibiotics for a prolonged period.
The injuries and illnesses looked as if they might prevent him from performing again. “You wake up the next morning and find that something else has gone wrong,” he told the Guardian in May. “You begin to think this is never going to end. Sharon could see that I was in Doom Town, and she says to me: ‘I’ve got an idea.’ It was something to give me a reason to get up in the morning.”
This was the Back to the Beginning concert which not only brought together the original Black Sabbath lineup for the first time since 2005, but also a series of metal greats who performed their own music as well as Black Sabbath cover versions. Metallica, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses and many more appeared, along with surprise guests such as Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood.
The auction for Osbourne’s collaborative chimpanzee paintings is open now, with bids for each artwork starting at £1,000.
