Colorado Senate Republicans in 2018 launched a fundraiser to collect $10,000 needed to commission the portrait.
A portrait of President Donald Trump in the Colorado Capitol will be taken down after the president dismissed the image as “truly the worst” and requested its removal.
The portrait was commissioned during Trump’s first term and has hung in the capitol rotunda’s hall of presidential portraits for almost six years.
“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado … was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday night. “The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one [of] me is truly the worst.”
Colorado Springs-based artist Sarah Boardman, who is in her 70s, has painted many portraits. A biography on her website said she worked in airline travel and business before shifting her focus to art. She attended the Wiesbaden Herzfeld School of Art in Germany in 1986, studying the techniques of the Old Master Painters.
“Sarah has always been passionate about painting portraits, being particularly intrigued by the depth and character found deeper in her subjects,” her website reads. “Sarah believes that the ultimate challenge is to capture the “personality, character and soul” of an individual in a two-dimensional format.”
Boardman couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. However, in a 2019 interview with the Colorado Times Recorder, she explained that she had aimed to “remain neutral” in her depiction of Trump.
“The portrait is not designed for just one faction of the population,” she told Times Recorder. “There will always be dissent, so pleasing one group will always inflame another. I consider a neutrally thoughtful, and non-confrontational, portrait allows everyone to reach their own conclusions in their own time, in addition to that approach being more durable over time.”
Her artistic decision at the time drew criticism from Democrats who did not look at the president the same way.
Colorado Senate Republicans led the effort to fund Trump’s portrait after Colorado Citizens for Culture, a nonprofit group responsible for commissioning presidential portraits, failed to secure enough donations.
By Bill Pan
