Blink-182 Rocker Mark Hoppus Is Selling His Iconic Banksy Painting — and it Could Fetch Up to $6.3 Million at Auction

Blink-182 rocker Mark Hoppus is unloading a famous Banksy painting from his personal collection — and it could fetch up to $6.3 million at auction.

Hoppus, 52, has owned the 2005 Banksy piece “Crude Oil (Vettriano)” since 2011, and is selling it next month in London, according to Sotheby’s.

The painting, by the anonymous British street artist, is Banksy’s take on the classic 1992 piece “The Singing Butler” by Jack Vettriano, and features the same couple dressed on a beach in their evening wear, only this time with a sinking oil liner in the background and a pair of men in hazmat suits dragging a barrel of toxic waste to shore.

“[My wife Skye and I] loved this painting since the moment we saw it,” Hoppus told the Associated Press of the piece, which has hung in their homes in Los Angeles and London.

Sotheby’s estimates the painting will sell for anywhere from $3.7 million to $6.3 million at auction, and the “What’s My Age Again?” singer said he plans to use the proceeds to buy work from up-and-coming artists. Hoppus also said he plans to donate money to the California Fire Foundation, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Cedars Sinai Hematology Oncology Research (He was diagnosed with lymphoma in April 2021 and was declared cancer-free five months later).

The company described Banksy’s piece as “one of the most instantly recognizable and audacious works in Banksy’s provocative oeuvre — a rare, entirely hand-painted canvas that epitomizes the artist’s role as a cultural agitator and sharp-witted social commentator.”

In a quote shared by Sotheby’s, Hoppus drew a comparison between street art and skateboarding, a longtime hobby of his, noting that many of the skaters he grew up with were also painters or photographers.

“We used to draw our own T-shirt designs and pull our own silkscreens… We had no label or support so we just did it ourselves,” he said. “I feel like street art has the same core. Punk rock. Hip hop. Skateboarding. Street art. The left out and overlooked making their own reality.”

“Crude Oil” was first unveiled in Banksy’s 2005 exhibition Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin, which also featured his take on famous paintings like Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” and Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.”