Damien Hirst, Butterfly Skull: Original drawing on limited edition Supreme skateboard, 2009

Damien Hirst

Butterfly Skull: Original drawing on limited edition Supreme skateboard, 2009

Mixed Media: Unique hand signed drawing of skull and butterfly on polychrome wood skateboard deck

Hand signed with a skull and butterfly drawing by Damien Hirst on the front of the skateboard

31 × 7 1/2 inches

This is a unique hand signed drawing of a skull and butterfly in indelible white marker; two of Hirst's signature images, done on the face of a limited edition skate deck published by Supreme in 2009.
The unique drawing makes the present work a true collector's item.

A 2012 Guardian review of his contemporaneous Tate exhibition discusses Hirst's preoccupation with butterflies:

"Butterflies made Damien Hirst's career and this is how he repays them: in a stark, white, windowless room in Tate Modern, hundreds of insects pull themselves from their pupae only to die there a few days later, surrounded by gawping tourists. For some visitors to Hirst's blockbuster retrospective, it is not the rotting cow's head surrounded by flies, the sheep in formaldehyde or the giant ashtray filled with cigarette butts that makes them feel queasy. It is the installation in Room 5, where tropical butterflies futilely flit around the boxy space, eventually falling to die on the floor, where they are promptly scooped up by security staff."

Similarly, the artist has had a career-long preoccupation with skulls:

In 2007, Damien Hirst made headlines with For the Love of God, a platinum cast human skull covered in 8,601 flawless diamonds. The bejeweled skull, which was bought for $100 million by an investment group that same year, was widely acknowledged at the time to be the most expensive contemporary artwork ever made. Hirst’s fascination with skulls began at a young age—at 16, the artist began visiting the anatomy department of Leeds Medical School to draw the cadavers. “[Death is] just something that inspires me, not something that pulls me down,” Hirst once explained. “And every day your relationship with death changes.” (-Artsy Magazine)