George Zimmerman is a lucky man. As if getting away with murder wasn't enough, Remorseless George found a way to capitalize on his ill-gained celebrity by auctioning his "patriotic" painting on ebay. Even more astonishing, he found some well-heeled racist to pay $100,000 for it. The killer artist might not have paid for his crime, but he sure knows how to make crime pay.
Like many, I am appalled at such audacity and complete lack of contrition on Zimmerman's part. As an artist of some note, I have responded by auctioning my painting inspired by the Zimmerman case, "A Tale Of Two Hoodies" on ebay and donating 50% of the proceeds to The Trayvon Martin Foundation. Founded by the parents of Zimmerman's victim, the organization is dedicated to advocate that crime victims, increase public awareness of all forms of racial ethnic and gender profiling and educate youth on conflict resolution techniques.
Perhaps the saddest thing to me is that there are well heeled racists out there who admire George Zimmerman so much as to reward him with over $100,000 for a truly amateurish painting. These people see him as some sort of a hero. If he's such a hero, I challenge him to donate 50% of his proceeds to the foundation named in the honor of the unarmed teenager he killed.
It has been my goal to use my art to challenge people to think more deeply about serious issues. I'm proud to say that my artwork has created passionate discourse around the world. My painting, "A Tale Of Two Hoodies" was meant to symbolize the travesty of racially profiling innocent children and the affect prejudice has on policy. It has created more of a stir than most of my others pieces. The response to the piece exposed a lot of unapologetic racism from angry white people who feel they are somehow the ones being persecuted. That's a sad indicator of the present mindset of our society. Unlike George, at least I can sleep at night knowing the piece will be benefitting victims of violent crimes and not the purveyors.
The auction begins Dec 20, 2013 09:00:56 PST and runs for one week on ebay at: http://cgi.ebay.com/.... The item number is 181285145260.
Learn about the artist and see more of his paintings at www.ArtandResponse.com