Plagiarizing another painters work is not allowed in the art community however, it is something that is much more prevalent that you would think. It happens all the time by many artists because the temptation is just too great. An artist will see a scene that they like and instead of making up their own, will copy another artists final painting and only change a few things hoping to get away with it. Most artists are self-righteous and claim they don’t do such a thing…..but, they do…trust me. Then, they go after artists when they are falsely accused of plagiarism just to make themselves look innocent!!!!
Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work or idea and passing them off as their own. This is also relevant in the profession of writing. As discussed on this blog, Dean Mitchell didn’t steal any painting from the great master Andrew Wyeth, however, he took Wyeth’s vision as an artist using his design setups, color schemes and even the same subjects. This is the same as stealing and copying a painting! This is a case where everyone who knows art has realized that years ago, but nobody complained about it because he is an African American, which means that he is pampered and nobody can say anything out of fear of being called a racist. Therefore, Mitchell got away with being a plagiarist for all these years. You can read the article about his plagiarizing below in this blog.
I have seen many examples of this over the years where plagiarists were not talked about. I also asked other artists to tell me of incidents where this happened. It was said that some artists plagiarize and then, fake destain for an artist who appears to have done that. Case in point is the incident several years ago where a famous artist was accused of plagiarizing a painting by the PSA and the AWS. This accusation was proven to be false by the artist’s attorney using the Far Use Law as a defense! However, all the high and mighty artists came out of the woodwork to assassinate this person, especially Rae Smith, Jimmy Wright and Antonio Masi. The AWS even kept award money that rightfully belongs to this artist and kicked him out of their society. Why, because they needed to look pure in front of their members and have them think that they would never do that. The artist became an example and made them look like they were doing a great job as Presidents of their societies. The fact that this artist was so much more talented and had more notoriety than any of them made it more easy and necessary to do this because of petty jealousy issues! Nobody likes a winner…one who succeeds in his or her profession!!!!!
To show you that plagiarism is much more prevalent than you think and, to prove my point about some artists being hypocrites about not copying other artist’s paintings, I will show you several examples of situations where two artists didn’t get away with it. The information for this was sent to me by several artists from around the country and verified by many more. The first example concerns a painting that was copied by Jim McFarlane and he claimed it to be an original.
This is the watercolor painting that McFarlane came up with. To make an attempt to make it look different, McFarlane added some dead trees in the middle ground and made the color of the marsh area a horrible color of burnt sienna instead of the beautiful complementary color of yellow to the blue sky and mountains in the first painting. This is a really bad watercolor. The mountain area is too defined and the mountain in the far distance is a cerulean blue, which makes it come forward as opposed to the ultra-marine blue used by the artist who was copied, which makes the mountain recede into the background!
By the way, Jim McFarlane was the president of the American Watercolor Society and the one who accused the artist I mentioned of plagiarizing a painting. McFarlane knew that the artist was innocent, but refused to give the artist his award money back. The irony here is that he wanted to make an example of this artist and all along, he was the one who was plagiarizing paintings.
Another artist who tried to destroy this falsely accused artist was Rae Smith. She too knew that the accusation was false but, instead of correcting a wrong, she literally contacted every single president of every single watercolor society in America telling them about this artist and what she thought he had done. Who does this….someone who actually does plagiarize paintings and wanted to assassinate this artist to make herself look like she would never do that kind of thing. That was way over the pale and completely unnecessary!!!!! Once again, a case of petty jealousy and trying to take down a successful artist!
This is only one of her plagiarized paintings. Unbelievably, it was entered into her very own exhibition of the PSA years ago and the Awards Judge actually gave her the Best in Show Award……favoritism at it’s worst!!!! No that took a lot of balls to do something like that!!!! This should have never happened in any show in America, not only because it was plagiarized, but because it indicates favoritism by giving officers money. The PSA never seemed to care about this!!!!! This is why you should look for other society shows to enter!!!!!
This is the actual painting that was copied, which was created many years ago. It is an oil painting that Smith obviously saw and literally copied the whole painting. If you notice though, her’s is not as successful as the original artist’s version. The sky in the original is much more exciting and beautiful. The mountains are also painted in so they become more defined. Lastly, the highlights of the sky colors are beautifully painted into the water. Smith’s version of this is lack-luster!
Showing you these two example proves that many artists, especially officers of societies, are hypocrites and actually do plagiarize paintings all the while they are accusing others of the same thing. Unfortunately, they are not the only ones. There are many more out there doing the same thing….they just haven’t gotten caught yet (Natasha Isenhour with her paintings of flying birds)! Whatever you do, while creating your own paintings, take the time needed to work out your own designs and visions instead of copying some other artist’s work. It will be much more meaningful to you and you won’t be disgraced as a viable artist!
OVER-RATED ARTISTS AND ART SOCIETIES 