AMA: That Time Target Sold What Looks Like a Dupe of My Painting

More thoughts on dupes and why I'm not flattered

If you follow me on Instagram, TikTok, or Threads, you know that Target is selling what appears to be a dupe of my pink and green checkerboard painting (which was sold originally to an interior design firm and also turned into prints for an exclusive partnership with Anthropologie and Artfully Walls).

Here’s how it works: Anthropologie and Artfully Walls work in conjunction to produce prints — so the Anthro versions are larger and and in nicer frames but both are approved copies of my work. When a print at either company sells, I don’t have to do anything — they print it, frame it, and ship it. But I get a small commission from every sale. It’s fair and it benefits me greatly by getting my name out there as an artist (plus, I do get paid, as I should, for work I did!)

It’s a lot like rights for a musical artist. If a musician sings and records a song, and it’s later used by a movie, the film company has to pay the artist for the use of their song.

Target’s checkerboard print is $5, which is disappointing on so many levels. It cheapens my original work, and it means that likely more of the dupe will be sold than the original. So the work will be equated with Target more than it is with the original creator: Me.

I shared this on social media not as a way to promote my work as an artist, but to have a conversation about dupes and how those inexpensive items you pick up at your local big-box store are often cheap replicas of works of art originally made by small creators. This is bad for the environment, but it’s also a way for corporations to profit off the backs of small creators, who get no credit or commission for the end product.

I want to get a couple of things out of the way up top:

• I know I am not the first artist to paint a checkerboard. I won’t be the last. But there are other considerations when it comes to Target’s dupe. The dupe sold at Target is done in the same colors and almost the same exact pattern (one that isn’t perfectly symmetrical). Then you take into account that my piece is sold at a major retailer like Anthropologie, and that around 500 of this print have sold. And that this particular piece has also been shared thousands of times on Pinterest alone. There’s no arguing that whoever made the piece being sold at Target had seen my work somewhere along the line.

• Artists are inspired by artists all the time. That’s the point of art. I have no qualms about someone painting something inspired by my work. I do have an issue with a huge company (one that I have at various times owned stock in, by the way) selling what is a cheap imitation of my work.

• The cost or subject of the work isn’t part of the discussion. I don’t care if someone likes it, and I don’t care if they think their “kid could paint that.” If their kid did paint it, and a huge company made a cheaper version and cut their kid out of the sale, I would hope they’d speak up.

• I am not flattered that Target is selling a dupe of my work. I get paid to paint things. My work hangs at the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show and has been purchased by celebrities and some of the world’s most famou interior designers. They all paid me for it, because that’s how commerce works. You do a job, you get paid. Time is money and if I spend time conceiving of something and then creating it, I should get paid.

• I do not need to be “humble,” or feel “flattered,” or be “grateful” that Target is selling this dupe, as several people on TikTok have suggested. No one would tell a man to be “grateful” he did work that he isn’t being paid for, and a woman speaking up does not need to be “humbled” by one of the largest corporations in the entire world, nor by the internet.

In the words of one of the best poets of all time, Jay-Z: “I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man. Let me handle my business, damn.”

More below the jump, including the audio of me delving deep into this entire thing.