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Success in art has a dark side. In my case, I have had shows in museums in this country as well as in Europe. My work has been purchased by collectors from all over the globe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been keeping a file on my work and I hope that someday they will acquire one of my paintings for their permanent collection. The Butler Institute of American Art has two paintings in their permanent collection and twelve of my paintings on loan. Such stamps of legitimacy often attract those who are not artists, but instead are painters.

Art, like music and poetry, is a language that is often studied but only a few manage to express themselves and their personal point of view in a unique way. One of the reasons for this is the way that art is taught. Young artists are often not taught how to find their own metaphors, they instead look to see how other artist's before them expressed their emotions and thoughts. This method of learning creates two distinct results. There are artists and there are painters, just as there are composers and there are musicians. 

A composer is someone who writes his own music. With that, we hear the resonance of his or her soul's uniqueness. A musician is someone who has learned to master a musical instrument. However, knowing how to play does not teach one how to invent a new score. A musician therefore needs to read the notes, written by a composer, in order to be able to show his mastery of the technical skills. In the same way, there are artists and there are painters. Artists create unique visions and painters copy them as though they were their own.

Usually, there are ethical boundaries that the morality within each of us erects. Copyright laws have been created to enforce the ethical boundaries of those who do not clearly see these differences. Copyright laws are rather like fences. When we examine the ones surrounding our countries borders, it is easy to see how well the fences are working. The height of a fence has to be taller than the incentive to cross it. When a desperate painter feels the need to survive economically, or feels unnoticed, or has an ego based pathology, they will seek the work of an artist who has successful imagery which they can learn to emulate. 

Copyright is often misunderstood and there are several reasons for this. I recently saw a program on television where they had a panel of thirty graduate students discussing plagiarism as well as the practice of cheating on tests. The conclusion of the program was that in contemporary thinking, the end justifies the means. These students were only concerned with getting their credentials while learning was a secondary concern. If one looks at the state of our health care system, it would be easy to cite some results from such thinking. If one frequents galleries and museums, one will begin to question the difference between influence and copying. Clear boundaries between influence and copying do not exist and each case is subject to interpretation.

Artists feel an affinity toward their work in the same way as parents feel about their children. In most cases, the drive to express one's vision is similar to someone who might need to be a rabbi or a priest. To become an artist was not a choice for me. I was born to be an artist and left a good job and all material dreams to pursue the impossible. While my friends and contemporaries were building large homes, getting married and having children, I lived in a single room in a boarding house with a kitchen that I was able to use on a floor below and a bathroom down the hall. I did this for three years! I went to Kane University to get an art degree after I learned that Pratt Institute had reviewed my portfolio and offered me to begin on a graduate program for which I had no money.

I earned a 4.0 grade average after taking on 64 credits in art in only two semesters. I had to have special permission to do this. I went from 180 to 128 pounds in weight. I feel that I paid dearly to do what my soul had guided me to strive for. For years my work did not sell. It took time and a lot of development in order to paint on a level that the public would support. The idea of someone copying the work that took me so long to legitimize would be devastating. 

Advances in modern technology make it all too easy to copy fine art. Cell phones can take pictures and can immediately send them to anyone. I have seen so many different methods and attempts to "rip off" original ideas. At a museum or a gallery, a painter might pose a friend near a group of paintings, just to record the imagery. In some cases, the details of deliberate efforts to copy original work read like spy novels. When confronted, most of the photographers argue that the work is in a public place and have no idea that photographing copyrighted work is considered to be an infringement of copyright, which would be upheld in Federal Court. 

When a copyrighted work is violated, an artist needs to meet with a lawyer who specialized in intellectual property. I have meet with several over the years and I learned of the inequities of our legal system with respect to copyright law and its enforcement. One lawyer told me that we had to pursue my case in another state because the infringing painter had the right of venue. This means that his work is only sold there and that I would have to provide travel expenses. Suing an artist in their home state would sometimes provide them with a home court advantage. However this can be overcome if there is a financial advantage on the part of the plaintiff which would exhaust the defendant's financial ability to sustain a defense. I have been told that a "cease and desist" letter would cost between two and six thousand dollars to process and serve. I was also told that a second letter might work sixty percent of the time and at an additional expense. If the second letter does not work, to be effective, a full trial needs to take place. The cost of this might be $85,000.00 or higher. When hearing these figures and statistics I wonder if these lawyers would have an incentive to write an effective letter for the first mailing. It would be an $85,000.00 advantage for these attorneys to have the first two letters fail or would it not? 

It is my finding that justice in a copyright case rests more on financial concerns than on principle. Information about the defendant's financial status determines if they can support a defense and if a judgment against them would be worth recovery of trial costs. The question also rests on the fact that the "offending and infringing painter" may benefit from the publicity if a known and established artist finds him significant enough to bring to court. There are other ways to get the message to the "offender" which are much less expensive and much less flattering. In most cases, if the "painter" needs to copy or get ideas from established artists, then the fate of his entire career is sealed by its own limitations. The offenders also have to live with the silent anguish because they are constantly reminded that they simply have less ability to work with. 

Imagery that is used in a painting is like vocabulary. We all have the same words available to us. However if someone combines these words to say the same thing that Hemingway or Robert Frost had said, this is considered infringement. It seems to be a popular belief that if a painter changes the image of an artist's painting by ten percent, then that would make it his. This in fact is not true. According to the copyright laws, copyright protection extends to creative work such as art, music, literature and computer software. The key word to define in any court would be 'substantial similarity'. Therefore, if one compares a body of work between two artist's, and the work has 'substantial similarity's'. then the court would determine that infringement has occurred. The concept of 'substantially similar' is a broad and subjective concept. Any painter who is so influenced by an artist's work should be aware that a jury will be deciding if his work is a copy or not. In that arena, a defendant should be very cautious of having someone see something 'substantially similar' during the court trial. The assessment of damages can be very expensive for the defendant. The final court decision also rests on probability. For example, thousands of artists paint on the coast of Maine. Each artist has his own interpretation of what they see. One can site Wyeth, Welliver, Homer and such, and with these artists, one can see the diversity and range of possibilities. But when one artist places a particular stone in a particular puddle, and paints from a certain angle with light and shadow unique, and another begins doing the same thing, then this is not influence but rather this may be an issue to be considered in a Federal Court.

Also, it must be noted that copyright infringement does not limit itself to its own media. There are cases of three dimensional work which has been inspired by a two dimensional rendering and it was found in court to be copyright infringement. In the same way, if Hemmingway wrote a story in pencil, and the story was copied by someone in ink, the court would see this as the same story. Therefore, if a watercolor is copied in egg tempera, it is still considered copying!

The greatest defense that artists have is public awareness and peer pressure. If you see that someone is copying someone else's work, and that the work of an original artist is being linked to an individual of questionable character and judgment then let the gallery know. As for the copyright laws, artists should all review these with great attention to the details. Many artists can not afford to enforce the law with a $100,000.00 legal fee. As a result, all they can do is to remain honest and keep those that stray in line by letting galleries know and as well as the painters themselves. If a painter makes it a point of following an established artist for a long period of time, stalking charges are a possibility and this can be addressed by contacting the appropriate authorities, as this may be a symptom to a greater problem which may need to be addressed. 

For a painter, copying offers financial advantages and such incentives often over-ride ethics. To some, "time equals money". For them it is safer and more efficient to go to a show and to find twenty composed, edited and market proven images from which to base one's work. Usually, a sudden change in a painter's portfolio may be a clue to such activity because most real artists evolve and grow yielding a slow and predictable evolution with their work. Those that copy often change their work in leaps and bounds. Their inspiration is not the art but rather the notoriety and success that another artist has achieved. Such copying can hurt everyone involved. The United States has provided thousands of artists with inspiration over the years. Yet each found their own interpretation and niche. The probability of two people producing numerous images that mimic one another may be an indicator that only one of them is an artist and the other is a painter. Only the length of their resume can decide which is the real McCoy! In my case, my art has provided me with my only source of income for over thirty years.