Dotbot bank1/8/2024 ![]() Anacode Chinese Web Datastore: a collection of crawled Chinese news and blogs in JSON format.You can buy both prints and originals on his website: or follow him on Instagram to see progress on his latest pieces. When you see past the fire and flames of America’s never-ending money problems, the paintings that lie beneath are serene and reminiscent of Monet or Renoir: impressionistic, vague and dream-like, painted with thick brushstrokes. And it doesn’t just have to be for one of his burning bank paintings, either - Schaefer also paints regular, normal paintings of scenes from around LA, around California and his imagination. Schaefer also says that he’s happy to trade any of his original artwork for Bitcoin. “Because I’m not a good ‘dropper,’ people got a great deal.” Adding that, they’re extremely affordable right now - he didn’t hype the drop of his crypto art enough, he says. “There's a series of seven of my NFTs out there,” he says. Any erudite cryptocurrency traders/collectors out there can now own original digital copies of Schaefer’s artwork - if they can purchase one of these extremely limited versions. Schaefer recently created his first NFT series as well, he says. “There's just a lot of money, and people that are interested in collecting art.” It’s right up their alley - which is why, Schaefer’s burning bank paintings are selling for thousands upon thousands of dollars. “The Bitcoin community loves the imagery of banks exploding,” he says. It’s the fight-club mentality of the cryptocurrency movement Bitcoin was built on: burn the system down and start a new one. What could possibly represent their libertarian financial movement better than images of long-standing financial institutions like Citibank and Chase erupting in flames and chaos? Naturally, Schaefer’s “ Burning Bank series” quickly endeared him to one particular community of financial pirate investors: the Bitcoin community. “I just think there's so much distortion in markets and what money is and the value of money is so far from its purpose that it's distorting everything. So he continued, torching one bank after the next, much to the delight of the internet. And much to Schafer’s surprise, he found himself blowing up on the internet - gaining fame (or infamy?) - slowly building a reputation as the guy who sets banks one fire… with his paint brushes. The tale of this anti-establishment, anti-financial-system, plein-air painter spread like a structure-fire across the internet. “Which is: the money is bullshit.”Īnyway, not long after his visit from the plainclothes detectives, Schaefer’s story erupted online. And all the problems in America - all the disconnected problems - to me, seem to point to the same root problem,” Schaefer says, pausing for effect. Namely, they just wanted to know: Did he really hate these banks that much? “They were concerned enough that they wanted to meet me and talk more.” “They’d obviously been looking into me,” he says with a shrug. They let him go, but, he says, they were interested enough to send two plainclothes detectives to his home a few weeks later. “The police questioned me on the spot,” he recalls. ![]() Schaefer was painting the bank across the street - a Chase Bank - except in Schaefer’s version, the bank was exploding erupting in flames, smoke billowing into the sky above. Indeed, it was curious, verging on alarming. And as officers approached the artist, they bristled and their eyebrows raised. Others, smiled, chuckled and snapped a picture before moving on.įatefully, one of those curious onlookers actually tipped police off that they might want to have a look at what Schaefer was painting. As he worked some passersby stopped to look at the painter’s easel, their faces scrunching in confusion as they glanced from subject to the canvass. It was a warm and sunny day in Los Angeles, California when the police approached Alex Schaefer, who was minding his own business, painting on the sidewalk.
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