Unending fight focus of new film
Years ago, Jacksonville artist RB McGrath bought a violin at a yard sale.
It was a fine instrument, she says, and she decided to paint a picture of it.
The result, the intricately detailed 2006 oil painting “Still Life of Violin,” won the Trompe L’oeil division at the Arkansas State Fair’s Creative Arts Competition. McGrath listed it along with her other works for sale at her now-defunct website.
In 2012, the self-taught artist was surfing around the web when she came across an ad by a Chinese firm, Xiamen Bigal Co. Ltd., that featured “Still Life of Violin.”
Bit of a shock, since the image was copyrighted by her.
“There was my image with my signature on it and their company’s name on it,” she says. “I went to their website and realized they were selling copies of it.”
It was the start of a frustrating journey through the world of international law and intellectual-property rights that hasn’t ended.
McGrath, whose paintings are in the permanent collections of the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Governor’s Mansion and the Central Arkansas Library System as well as private collectors, called lawyers and government officials. With help from Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, she presented her case to a panel at the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington.
“They said I would have to hire a Chinese lawyer in a Chinese court and file my case in the Chinese language, which I thought was weird because they were selling it in English.”
The case is stuck in a holding pattern, she says.
McGrath’s story is told in a new documentary, “Digital Peruggias,” by director Keith Hudson.
A private screening of the 25-minute film, which takes its name from Vincenzo Peruggia, who in 1911 stole Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” from the Louvre, is set for Wednesday in Jacksonville. It also will be posted then on YouTube, Hudson says.
Hudson has known McGrath since he was 13 and she cut his hair at her salon, Roberta’s, which is next to her gallery.
While earning his film degree at the University of Central Arkansas, he decided in 2014 to document McGrath’s plight with help from his friend, Pham Minh.
“I thought she would be a perfect subject for a documentary,” the 31-yearold says from his home in North Hollywood, Calif.
Hudson hopes the movie, with a soundtrack by Jacksonville jazz musician Alan Storeygard, will bring attention to McGrath and the subject of intellectual-property theft.
“She was speaking with government officials all these years and kept hitting the same brick wall over and over again. My focus with this documentary is to shed light on how this affected her as an American artist. Sometimes things are stacked against you, but you have to keep pushing on.”