In 2006, Gavin Shettler's portrait had a number of delightful adventures. I painted this portrait for Critics Critiqued in 2003, and three years later it got a second chance at public life with the Portland Art Center's show Boredom: I Learned It By Watching You.
The other, more educational encounter ocurred in cyberspace. A fellow artist and blogger lifted the image of this portrait seen above, edited it, and used it as an illustration on his blog since, in that particular post, he was talking about Shettler. The blogger removed the drawn figure to the right of the portrait as well as most of the text below the image itself (everything except "Gavin Shettler"), ultimately posting an image that belonged to me without crediting me at all. At the time, the artist was blogging for a major newspaper.
When I discovered that he had published my image without credit, I was confused. I thought that a fellow artist of all people would understand the meaning of intellectual property. Apparently, I was wrong. It became clear through an email conversation that this artist-blogger did not consider my work worthy of credit--perhaps he felt that Shettler's portrait "belonged" more to Shettler than to me?

To learn more about the making of Critics Critiqued, please visit my blog.