Art Theft

Last weekend I found out that a friend's art had been stolen by another area artist. Something that is often hard to prevent, especially in this day of social media. However this was done the old fashioned way. The fibre artist's piece had been sold years ago, the culprit removed the sewn on signature and posted  it on her website for sale.

In the process of emails between various artists, it turned out there were pieces of art from other artist's work that she also represented as her own, fibre, stained class and paintings.  She had been banned already from one painting instructors class for copying the teachers work. When accused the artist offered up various excuses but finally under pressure she closed her website, supposedly remove all offending pieces and opened a new site. She was also removed from one gallery that she exhibited at.

 

Hard to believe that anyone is so naïve as not to be aware of COPYRIGHT. On a larger scale I have since heard from another artist about a company that stole a painter's image and printed it on thousands of t-shirts in China.

As most artists cannot afford  to pay for copyright on every piece they produce and going to court is another; my suggestions.....document, document, document and whenever possible add watermarks.