The following is one of my recently sold paintings. This is a long blog post, so consider yourself warned. I have used this scripture in my work many times over the years as it always brings me great comfort. I was watching the Tucker Carlson/Alex Jones interview the other day and it really dredged up some difficult memories for me as Jones discussed in detail how two very disturbed and evil people set out to destroy his business by contacting his sponsors and getting them to no longer do business with him. His story hit way too close to home for me as I have also been the victim of a very sick individual who has stalked me online and set out to try and destroy my business in that same manner... contact those doing business with me and get them to no longer do business with me. I am sharing my story in the hopes that someone else may be going through this right now and that this may bring them some hope or comfort. (story below)
This is the first time I'm publicly sharing these in depth details of this story because it was a very terrifying time for me and my family and it is difficult to discuss.
I recently watched the Carlson/Jones interview in which Jones shared the story about how two men, Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, had such hatred for Jones that they set out to try and destroy his business and livelihood by getting his sponsors to drop him. If he has no sponsors, he can't do his show. Essentially what they were doing was preventing someone from having the right to free speech, and doing it with the sole intent of shutting him down, destroying his business/livelihood and ruining him. Watching him recount this made me sick in the pit of my stomach and soon tears were streaming down my face. So if anyone has read this far you are probably saying, “oh come on.. crying?? really?” Yes real tears streaming down my face. His accounting of what happened to him being attacked in this manner by Stelter and Darcy hit so very close to home for me.
I don't care if you like, love or hate Alex Jones, everyone is entitled to FREE SPEECH. I have been on the receiving end of the same type of evil that controlled Stelter and Darcy and I will continue to cheer on Alex Jones and his right to FREE SPEECH forever.
I haven’t shared the full info of the story I’m sharing here below because it was an extremely terrifying time in my life and my family's life. Honestly it was hearing Alex Jones’ story about what he had to live though because of Stelter and Darcy that I am sharing this here today because when I watched his interview and heard him talking about this the tears just started streaming down my face.
For me it started with posts being made about me on eBay bulletin boards, always form ‘fake’ accounts with like zero feedback. The posts would say horrible things about me like making posts saying I was a prostitute, or other times just saying how shitty my art was and that I had no talent. When they saw I would just laugh about it or mock their comments that is when things got worse. At the time we simply thought it was a jealous artist who was upset that I was doing so well for myself and that it was probably someone who was not succeeding.
We dealt with nasty emails being sent to us non stop, all about how awful my artwork (mostly my Christian art), but we took it all with a grain of salt and just hit DELETE every time. We didn’t respond, we wouldn’t react, we just kept thinking just ignore it and it will go away. It didn’t. I honestly believe the not reacting was making this very evil person more enraged as things just kept getting worse.
Their next attempt to harm me came in the way of them contacting every business owner that I did business with to force them to not do business with me. That is why I was brought to tears watching the Tucker/Jones interview because when he spoke it dredged up all of the memories of what I had/have to deal with from sick individuals who can’t let others alone to just live their lives.
Sadly we didn’t know what was happening and that the retailers/dealers that were selling my art were being contacted because nobody told us what was happening, they were all just dropping like flies and we were left scratching our heads thinking what the hell is going on? None of it made any sense because all of the dealers/retailers that were selling my art were doing very well and always reordering stock of my art.
It was not until the owner of the largest furniture store that had been carrying my art prints reached out to my ex-husband and told him what was happening and why he had to stop selling my artwork in his furniture store. He explained to my ex that he received a horrible email about me, one so vile and graphic that he would not share it with my husband and explained that he was frightened to continue to do business with me as he didn’t want his business suffering. He would not share the email with my husband as my husband begged him to send it to us, and he told him he would not even repeat what was in the email he received but that it was very bad, extremely vile. He was a good man, he felt sorry for us, but he said that he didn’t want his business to suffer. So I can say that I experienced 'cancel culture' before cancel culture was a thing. It was absolutely devastating. It was emotionally devastating. It was financially devastating and this is exactly what this sick fuck wanted to put me through. I think that is another reason I have not wanted to share this information for fear that they will get joy out of hearing the pain and torture we endured at their hands.
The harassment did not stop there.
They harassed us through emails, threatening phone calls, they stopped all businesses from wanting to have anything to do with the sales of my art, I got to where I could not advertise anything good that would happen to or in my business, because if I did they would contact them. It is hard to grow your business when you can’t advertise all the places people can read articles about you, or read about your partnerships, etc. They wanted to stop me from doing anything on the internet at all. My ex-husband had an idea of who it was, someone in the art world who had dealings with me for my artwork, but I just couldn’t believe that it could be the person he suspected. My ex was a good judge of character though and from things this person would say to him during phone conversations he had with him, that had nothing to do with my art; things like how he had a powerful job in telecommunications, etc just things that my ex never asked about and things that were not in line with the conversation of me or my art.
We just pushed hard through dealing with the stress of all that was going on around us on a daily basis with the anonymous harassment. Get up.. put a smile on and I kept painting and working 7 days a week. It was not until what happened next that we actually began to fear for our safety.
One day we noticed that there was a web page coming up in the search engines that was using my brush name ‘the raw artist’ but that wasn’t pointing to my business website, it was going somewhere else as you could tell by the url of the webpage. At that time I was painting under the brush name ‘the raw artist’. I used that brush name because of my raw food diet and the fact that I was a self-taught artist, and the term ‘raw art’ is often used for an outsider or self-taught artist.
This website that was set up using my brush name ‘ the raw artist’ and was created to defame my character, to mock my Chistian art, and to honestly harm my business and scare me. The web page was created on all black background and the put my images of my cross paintings on the page but had all the crosses hanging upside down. At the top of the webpage was the photograph of a bust and head of a naked woman with gigantic breasts right by what was their mock artist bio of me. The web page was littered with links that would take anyone who clicked on them away to the most vile pornography images/sites your mind can imagine. We were no longer only dealing with what has previously just been constant and daily aggravating emails/phone calls, and financially devastating loss of dealers, but now we were facing something far more evil and disturbing that had us seriously fearing our safety. Who was doing this? Is this someone in another state, another country.. in the same town? You don’t know so you are constantly looking over your shoulder.
Upon seeing that webpage we knew immediately there was nothing else to do but to hire a private detective in the hopes they could help us get all of this to stop. We searched the internet trying to find an investigator who specialized in the internet and finding those who were stalking people online. We found a detective, in another state, who had a very lengthy career not only as a detective, but also as an individual who traveled around the U.S. to train police departments on internet profiling to find and locate people who were doing these exact type of things. I researched as good as I could to see what he said of who he worked with checked out and we called him, explained what was happening and he was very excited to take the case and help us. He explained he was the best out there at this very type of case and that he would no doubt be on this person’s door step very quickly.
I will refrain from telling the rest of the story here… but there is much, much more to this story.
After watching the Tucker/Jones interview I felt encouraged to tell my story on this issue because I know this bullshit is happening to good and innocent people every day. There are mentally ill, sick and twisted individuals who will stop at nothing to try and destroy another person’s life for no reason other they don’t like that person’s beliefs, opinions, etc. I’ve also learned that most stalkers succeed in silencing their victims because the victim becomes fearful that if they come forward and make what is happening to them known the stalker will make matters worse for them. I thought this scripture was fitting for this story.
There may be another out there right now who stumbles across this reads this and then takes comfort in this scripture.
I don’t give up. I won’t back down. I won’t be silenced. I fear no evil.
