Image of 'cocaine Kate' inspires art exhibition

Tousled blonde tresses tumbling over a short black dress, Kate Moss leans over to prepare a line of cocaine. It is an image that has gained near-iconic status, marking the moment when the media turned against the supermodel from Croydon who had been its darling for so many years.

This time though, it is not a grainy camera-phone picture but the work of the artist Stella Vine who has used pictures of Moss apparently snorting cocaine as inspiration for a new exhibition.

Entitled The Beautiful and the Damned after an F Scott Fitzgerald novel - which was also the theme of Moss's 30th birthday party - the exhibition includes four paintings of the supermodel. Must Be The Season Of The Witch, which Vine only completed yesterday just in time for the opening night, is based on the Daily Mirror picture.

A second portrait, Kate Unfinished, depicts Moss as a doe-eyed Brigitte Bardot-style beauty, clutching a champagne glass. In a third, Moss is shown smoking a cigarette, paint dripping from the outline of her chin, with the accompanying text: "Holy water cannot help you now."

Vine has also painted Moss surrounded by a gaggle of celebrity friends at the Priory, where she spent six months in 1998 being treated for drink and drug problems.

Moss is seen waving her arms from a window, while her boyfriend, the Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty reaches out to her from another window. The scene features Moss's former boyfriend Johnny Depp with his current partner Vanessa Paradis, Jude Law and Sienna Miller and Law's ex-wife Sadie Frost.

Vine, who worked as a stripper to support herself until she came to prominence last year when Charles Saatchi bought two of her works, has painted Moss before, but has never met the model, working instead from photographs. She once painted a portrait of Moss, adorned with the words "I only make love to Jesus", which was bought by the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. Vine said: "I struggled for quite a long time to paint her. All last year I couldn't and then I got quite used to her and really enjoyed painting her. I feel quite compassionate about her.

"There's something in her eyes, a spirit that we're fascinated with. She's been in the business for so long. She's almost the most beautiful woman in the world, a Mona Lisa. She has that Catherine Deneuve mysterious thing. You can read her how you want to. We're fascinated by rock and roll wild culture, because most of us can't do that for whatever reason. It's nice to see people being hedonistic, decadent and glamorous."

Alongside the pictures of Moss, Vine has included a painting of the Rolling Stones in their younger days, to highlight the inconsistent attitudes towards hedonism in male and female celebrities.

She said: "If a woman has a child and has a really wild life, it all gets a bit more vindictive, she's a terrible person, whereas if a man has a wild life and a child, it's OK, because the mother's looking after it."

The artist feels particularly sympathetic towards Moss because she herself has just kicked a £600-a-week cocaine habit. Most of the pictures in the exhibition were painted during a four-month cocaine binge, which Vine blames on the pressure she came under to work non-stop.