*British artist Richard Wilson was disheartened to discover his mural of Aretha Franklin was vandalized shortly after he completed an homage to Detroit music.
Wilson was commissioned to create a mural in the Eastern Market. He didn’t finish it on time, so he’s been staying in the city on his own dime to complete it, wzzm13.com reports. He finished the piece Friday after 12 days of painting, according to the site, but when he returned the next morning “to tidy up the paint and see if there’s anything I want to adjust,” Wilson said he discovered paint dripping down Franklin’s face, and canisters littered the ground beneath it.
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The artist was brought to Detroit to create the painting for the annual Murals in the Market public art event. He spent nearly two weeks completing his piece depicting classic vinyl albums of Detroit artists, including the Queen of Soul.
“I finished it yesterday evening… all happy,” he said. “I came back this morning just to tidy up a bit, check if there’s anything I missed or anything.”
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Richard Wilson, a London-based artist in Detroit for #MuralsInTheMarket, is fixing up his mural featuring Aretha Franklin and other famous Detroit records after it was splattered by paint left in a cherry picker and inadvertently vandalized overnight. @freep pic.twitter.com/qxGwKYBNE1
— Aleanna Siacon (@AleannaSiacon) September 29, 2018
Wilson believes someone climbed up into the raised basket of a cherry picker where he was storing tubs of spray paint and dumped black paint over the mural.
“It’s like they had a paint party here, and it’s just splattered all over the place.”
Storing paint inside the basket of a cherry picker is reportedly a normal practice for the mural artists. The machine’s arm is typically raised so that no one can get into the supplies.
“They’ve almost had to like tightrope up it… which is a lot of length to go to,” he said, explaining how they would’ve had to climb up the machine’s arm. You’d be hard pushed to make this kind of mess, especially if you’re stealing stuff you want to be a little bit, I would imagine, inconspicuous, but no…”
The Franklin portion of the mural received the most damage, but Wilson doesn’t think anyone was trying to target the singer.Â
“The machine happened to be parked where the J Dilla album and Aretha album (are),” he said. “I think if the machine was parked somewhere else, that part of wall would have got the treatment, it just happened to be it was parked there.”
Detroit Free Press Aretha Franklin mural defaced in Eastern Market; paint thief suspected Detroit Free Press London-based artist Richard Wilson spent Saturday fixing up his Eastern Market mural depicting an Aretha Franklin album cover after the piece was… https://t.co/XfGdQYx51D
— Detroit Michigan (@DetroitMichiga) September 30, 2018
Luckily, the painting is located on the rear of the Gratiot Central Market, which has a surveillance camera. Wilson is now waiting to learn more from the footage.
In the meantime, he is focused on restoring the mural before he heads back home to London.
“It’s frustrating because it’s a lot of work,” he said. “That particular cover of Aretha that I painted was quite challenging…and it took me a while.”
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