Denny Dent, 55; Artist Known for Painting Swiftly

Denny Dent, 55, a performance artist who, with brushes and paint flying, could produce 6-foot-high portraits of rock icons and other celebrities in about eight minutes, died of multiple organ failure Monday in Aurora, Colo.

With music blaring and holding as many as three paintbrushes in each hand, Dent splattered his way through portraits of everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Albert Einstein.

The self-described “artrepreneur” earned $25,000 a performance at rock concerts and other events.

The Oakland-born Dent, a 10th-grade dropout and onetime commercial artist, launched his unusual career in 1981 in Las Vegas when a radio station sponsored a vigil in a park to observe the first anniversary of John Lennon’s murder.

“My message is that art has nothing to do with paint,” he told the Christian Science Monitor in 2000. “Art is not technique, but an expression from your heart.”