My Stolen Images on Chinese Websites

Golden Sax - Susanne Clark
Acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 inches

Yesterday I decided to search on Google to see if any of my paintings were illegally on the internet.  I know that there are whole towns in China, and other places, consisting of great numbers artists who work in factories that steal artist’s images and reproduce them for sale.  Copyright means nothing to them and someone told me, jokingly I hope, that the artists think copyright means that they actually have the right to copy the work!

Looking at my website stats I often see that visitors from China have been visiting it and also a couple of other sites that I use so I thought that there could be some sites that had my images on them. I indexed “Chinese Musical Paintings” into Google and within a few minutes found one web site with several of my images, painted in oil, available for sale.  I believe they copy the low grade digital file off the internet and then print it to size, you can order whatever size you want, and then they over paint it in oils and sell it as an original.  Watermarks don't help as they just paint them out.

The next thing I found was a bit of a shock.  I found nearly all the paintings from my “Musical Series”  and several life works listed complete with my bio, all stolen from my web site.  They had some listed as “Special new piece from Susanne Clark” which probably meant that it was the latest piece they had just lifted from my site!  There were a whole lot of others under a variation of my name, Suanne Clark.  Later I found a couple of paintings under my name that weren’t even my work.

The work was on a site where independent sellers from all around China and the world list their goods for sale.  I contacted the hosting company with a list of my works and the URLs and today I had an email saying they had removed my work from their site but to check back in 48 hours.  I’m sure the companies responsible re-list them a few days later or on another site so I will check back frequently.

This is a pretty common thing to happen but it still gives you a shock when you see all your work listed for sale there and know that people are illegally making money from it. 

I suppose I could choose to be flattered that they stole my work.   As a friend said to me  “They only choose the best” which was.nice of them.

Saxophone paintings from the Musical Series

The Sausalito Art Festival, San Francisco

San Francisco Harbour enroute to Sausalito Art Festival

 I'm writing this in chilly San Francisco.  You can see how dull it has been from the photo above!   I'm here visiting my son and I planned the visit so I could take in the Sausalito Art Festival.   It's rated as one of the top art fairs in North America and so I was really excited to get there and be impressed and inspired by the high standard of work.  I'm not sure why, but I didn't find it as exciting as I expected.


We had a nice trip over the harbour on the Blue and Gold line which took us directly to the art show right on the edge of the water.  We were there around midday on the Saturday and the crowds were just starting to arrive.  They really get a great turnout and because you have to pay a good fee to get in, you know that the people who come are actually reasonably interested in art and not just our walking their dog.  It's a large show and as I was with other family members I couldn't take all day to go around but I did manage to do the circuit and see most, if not all, of the artists work.

My favorite was enamel work by Judy Stone.  Her work, which I first thought was porcelain, was beautiful!  I loved the wired parts of her bowls and the beautiful colors.  She has a great video on her site showing the process of creating the bowls which was very interesting.  I don't think the photos on her site do justice to the wonderful colors and presence her work has when you see the actual thing. http://www.jstoneenamels.com

I also liked the abstract paintings of Paula Boas.  http://www.paulaboas.com  Alenjandro Martinez-Pena http://www.martinez-pena.com and Sue Cretarolo http://www.suecretarolo.com.

The printmaker Fernado Reyes had some very interesting work and I particularly liked this image. http://www.freyesart.com/Works_on_Paper/Pages/Monoprints.html#0 .
Do check out his other work too. 

There was also a wonderful glass artist and a guy who made a really quirky series of ceramic cars with funny people in them.  His craftsmanship was great.  Unfortunately I don't have photos of his work and I couldn't find his link on the festival page.

The picture below shows one of the most expensive works we saw.  The image was made with silk thread and obviously took many many hours to make.  You can see the image in the left of the picture taken with two smiling family members.  I'm using a different computer and couldn't work out how to crop them out of the photo!

Another favorite was Robert Burridge http://www.robertburridge.com/roadside_attractions/index.html
and http://www.robertburridge.com/Abstracts/wingland/index.html

All in all it was a good day but I wasn't tingling from the experience.