Tom Sanford, the New York-based artist behind the controversial 2005 painting “The Assassination of Dimebag Darrell”, has posted a lengthy update on his official web site addressing the criticism of his work by metal fans who found the painting to be in poor taste. His message is re-published below in its entirety.
“It seems that my 2005 painting ‘The Assassination of Dimebag Darrell’ is going back to auction and this has re-ignited the ire of Dimebag’s fans. In fact I learned of the auction through a surge in the regular trickle of hate mail/criticism that this piece engenders. Roadrunner Records’ blog, called Blabbermouth, posted a short (and I thought remarkably fair) article about my painting and the upcoming Phillips de Purdy auction. This post was picked up by various other metal blogs and was heavily commented on by their readers. The post linked to my website, and lead to an onslaught of email to me. Most of the email amounted cursing me out while accusing me of crimes ranging from poor taste to exploiting the death of Dimebag. I guess that I am guilty of both.
“Back in early 2005, when I made the painting, the reaction of Dimebag’s fans was actually not on my mind. I was interested in this tragedy as a historical event that occurred in our media saturated world, but was without a defining image of the event. Normally the pervasive 24-hour news and infotainment industry is able to define newsworthy events with an image or video. In this case the event was only captured in the accounts of witnesses who saw the horrific event live at the Alrosa Villa. This afforded me an opportunity to make a painting that might be the only visual depiction of the tragedy, and yes, I exploited this opportunity.
