There is an ongoing auction on the Cowley Abbott auctioneers' website, and currently going for $15,100 in Lot 27, there is a David Bowie painting with an interestingly wild backstory.

Only about 45 original artworks of the musical icon David Bowie (David Robert Jones), who passed away in 2016, are known to exist. Seeing how rare they are, a thrift store in Northern Ontario, Canada is the last place you'd expect to see one, but this is exactly what happened with DHead XLVI.

The 9.75 x 8 inches ( 24.8 x 20.3 cms ) acrylic and computer collage on canvas painting is titled DHead XLVI and signed and dated 1997 on the reverse. A further read-through of the lot's description shows that the painting is from a private collection and that its provenance has been confirmed. Here is where the story gets interesting.

According to reports, a collector browsing through a thrift store in the south of North Bay, Ontario, stumbled upon the painting labeled “David Bowie” with the artist’s signature on the reverse. And surprisingly, the price tag on it was marked $5.

Proving to be an original with information revealing that it was framed on June 25, 1997, at the John Jones Art Centre in Finsbury Park in London, England, plotting the path of the 1997 painting from England to the tiny Canadian town with a population of 1,114 is still an interesting mystery.

Meanwhile,  additional information provided by the Canadian auctioneers reveals more about the English singer-songwriter's venture into the visual arts and the creation of the DHead series. It read:

David Robert Jones, known more commonly as David Bowie, was an icon of the music industry. Like many musicians, Bowie studied art and design as a young man, which would foster a love of fine art throughout his lifetime. He was also a passionate collector and painter, heavily influenced by the modernist art trends of the twentieth century; his paintings possess the stylistic influences of the German expressionists, Francis Bacon and the London School of painters.

Between 1995 and 1997 Bowie created a series of approximately forty-seven works on canvas which he entitled Dead Heads (or D Head). Each title included a non-sequential Roman numeral. The sitters ranged from band members, friends and acquaintances and there were also some self-portraits. It has been suggested that, for some of these important paintings, Bowie drew inspiration from the Ziggy Stardust era. With long hair and a pronounced profile, this energetic and enigmatic portrait is truly a rare representation from a celebrated artist.

We would like to thank Andy Peters at davidbowieautograph.com for his assistance in confirming the authenticity of this lot.

The painting was put up for auction on Tuesday, June 15 (today) and bidding will close on June 24. The expected price was put in the range of $9,000 - $12,000, an estimate that is seen as cheap, per the Globe and Mail, as a separate Bowie painting sold for around $38,000, months after his death in 2016.

Who wouldn't want to discover an original artwork in a thrift store for a ridiculously low price? Even better, you can discover valuable artworks all from the comfort of your home by browsing through the artworks in the galleries listed on Aworanka and doing some bounty hunting clicking. Wink-wink!