Marital Discord or Secret Collusion? we peer at the locked door of 671 Washington Ave, South Beach, to find out!
Editor’s note: there are several artists called Don Hall, so please do not mistake them! The Don Hall in question is the one married to plagiarist Wendy Marani. So far as we can tell the others are more talented and may even have talented wives. The following story is TRUE, the quotes are all real, though the style may have been picked for comedic effect. We give you the low down on the low brow art world, with none of that olde-worlde bollocks!
Shameless plagiarist Wendy Marani is wife of premier US artist Don Hall!
Nancy Farmer, 42, from good old Blighty, was shocked last week to discover her work ripped off by Ms Wendy Marani, the bonkers buxom plagiarist from Florida. Nancy spilled the beans on her website but Marani, 41, 47, or 55, didn’t give two hoots! So we donned our deer-stalkers, grabbed our laptops, and went investigating. We can now reveal that Marani is married to none other than Don Hall!
Don Hall is a professional sports and celebrity artist in Miami Beach, Florida. CEO of Don Hall Art gallery, 671 Washington Avenue, Don is too famous to need his own website, but we tracked down this elusive superstar on some other sites. “Don is widely regarded as the premier sports and entertainment artist in the U.S. today”, says Don Hall.
Most of Don’s paintings look almost like photographs, except not quite right, giving them a surreal quality which is almost interesting. “Being an avid sports and movie buff led to his very unique style of art” Don says.
Don describes his wife as “former Playboy and Sports Illustrated model… whose art and fashion revolves around erotic and fantasy themes.”
But does Don know the sordid secret of his wife’s erotic fantasies? Does he know that, far from being the pervert that she perhaps claims to be, she stole the ideas straight off the drawing board of our own home-grown Brit totty, Nancy Farmer?
We left messages on his guestbook, but he deleted them without comment! “Anything you want. Money talks, nobody walks” says Don on a website. We did not pay him any money. He walked.
Is Don hiding his wife’s shame? Or is he just protecting himself? “My kids can get rich… later.” Says Don. He has “2 kids in college and a new Corvette on order”. We would like to ask him: Can he afford his wife’s reputation?
He’s certainly a very busy guy! On 20th February 2013 he said: “The sun never sets in South Beach. Just finished with Miami International Boat Show, Wynwood Art and Coconut Grove Art, already starting International Wine and Food Festival, getting ready for the big one, Winter Music Conference and Ultra Music Festival. Everyone who is anyone in the music business will be in town, many already are.”
But meanwhile is Wendy Marani pulling the wool over his eyes? If he knew, would he ask her to stop it?
We like to think he would. He’s obviously a very down-to-earth, practical kind of guy. Where he has posted images of some of his less successfull paintings he says “Cheapest Don Hall anywhere, buy it for the name”. We would not, because our walls are full of pervy Nancy’s paintings. Oh, and because they would shatter mirrors.
Editor’s note: Nancy Farmer assures us that she is not a pervert. “My paintings are perfectly logical” says Nancy. “Anyone could see that the perfect job for Medusa would be a professional dominatrix”. Yeah, right. Did she tell you about the Dolls?
Sources and other stuff:
ALL the quotes are real quotes taken from Don Hall’s page on ArtID.com. Please don’t email ArtID to tell them, they know! ArtID are one of the good guys. I shall soon be putting my own artwork on there, now that they have deleted the account of Wendy Marani. They run an excellent gallery site and have been massively supportive to me and VERY annoyed to find what this pair are up to on their site. Oh, and if you’re interested in maybe using ArtID, you can try it – open a free account there. And no, I am not being paid to say this 🙂
Feel free to send messages to Don Hall himself – his ArtID account (while it lasts) has a very tempting guestbook… messages will be deleted almost instantly, but it’s still fun!
Art by Nancy Farmer 
I am so glad I am subscribed to your blog, it sure does put a smile on my face!!! Keep it coming!
Thank you Tina! I hope you will still like it when it is mostly just about my paintings – this is a bit of a comedic interlude spurred on by people who were so asking for it! Mind you, my paintings are not sensible 😉
I’d put money on it….they’re in cahoots, a pair of fakers!
I think you’re right Dave!
I can’t understand why my comments in Don’s guests book keep disappearing?!?! 😛
oh, did you make him busy again, Tina? ! 😀
Indeed! Or he has it set to not accept new comments…?! Not much point in having a guest book if you don’t want guests to leave comments is there?!
Hey Tina, I think you confused Don (if it was you) your comments and mine have re-appeared! Maybe he was not deleting them all last night, but they aren’t all there, just yours and mine. Weird!
Too too toooooooo funny!
LOL! Strange!
Oh dear…. this is tragic, and not in a cathartic way: http://artid.com/members/donhallart/art/52076-medusa-riding-the-dragon/
I know, isn’t it just! I had too many to chose from I just couldn’t fit that one in!
They messed with the wrong artist me thinks!! Bet they’re regretting it now 😉
If they aren’t, Fran, it’s because they are quite slow on the uptake!
I hope you’re not going to use all this as an excuse when we have to wait until March 2014 for our calendars? I bet erotic Wendy doesn’t keep her customers waiting!
Hahaha, Noooo! definitely not: tomorrow I shall be printing the last of the pictures… And even if that is a total cock-up (technical etching term) I have another six weeks after Easter to do another one, sooo pleased to have those mostly in the bag 🙂
Thanks for the update, Nancy. What pair!! Frightening, too..
they really are, Fiona! Here’s another quote for you: “As I always keep reproduction rights, so I can make same or modified signed originals” – what does that even mean!??
Thanks for discovering this great talented and original naive artist …
😀 yes indeed!
Just stumbled across your page, and I have some experience with this guy. I am an artist in Kansas and I answered a Craigslist ad for someone looking for portrait art. He (Don) asked me if I could paint likenesses, and asked if I could prove it by doing a demo piece. While I normally don’t do that much extra work to win a commission, I relented and painted a small Marilyn Monroe portrait. He then asked me if I could paint some members of the Miami Heat, life size, on large unframed canvases. He was evasive on copyright issues, and the payment he was offering for such large works was ridiculously small, barely even covering the cost of materials to complete it.
Imagine my non-surprise when I was contacted by a couple of other people with claims that this guy was reselling works bought on the cheap online at a massive markup. I got several emails from a third party who advised me to stay away (although I had already decided to do so) and gave me some links to some of the ‘art’ he claims to have painted.
This guy is a con artist, plain and simple.
Hi, and wow! I knew that something was fishy about this guy, especially when you see what he actually paints on his own, but I hadn’t realized the extent of the total dishonesty of this guy. Still it fits with the wife. An interesting tale, thank you very much for sharing. Some of my friends and contacts would be fascinated to hear this… any chance I could repeat it (keeping you anonymous of course) on my facebook page? Some people would find it as interesting as i do. If you don’t want it broadcast, no problem!
Absolutely….feel free to use my experience. And just for the record, the Marilyn Monroe piece she has on her page isn’t mine….I never sent the one I did. It is the same image though. But I have copies of emails from some other artists who did paint some large works for Don, and later found out what he was doing. In short, I doubt he’s painted ANY of the celeb/sports images he has on his pages. And I seriously doubt he has permission from the professional sports organizations (or their players) to make money off their brands and likenesses.
Thanks, and so glad you left the comment – it’s not something I’m intending to take up as a cause or anything (wasted enough time on him and his wife), but it is the final piece that makes sense – I had wondered what his paintings amounted to since some of the stuff was so obviously dreadful and then other stuff looked so photographic.