A dad’s hilariously bad portraits have gone viral – and now he is flooded with paid art commissions worldwide..
Jamie Matthias’s side-hustle started by accident after he painted a “terrible” portrait of his wife Kate as a wedding gift. She thought the artwork was so funny she posted a picture of it on social media and within days it racked up thousands of views. Jamie, 41, has since been inundated with requests from people desperate for him to create funny versions of their own snaps. The dad-of-three, from Alsager, Staffs, now juggles his art business which his full-time accounting job.
He said: “I actually don’t mean to paint badly and I’m doing my best to recreate the photos I get sent but it’s just the way they turn out. “I try and create an alternate universe where proportions have no meaning. I’ve painted for years but I had no idea they were so bad until people started telling me. I find painting really relaxing so I did some for the friends and family over Christmas. The reactions were priceless.
“I thought I’d stick one out there and see if anyone wanted one. I made a joke, because of the poor quality of my art, that I might start trying to sell it to make money.”
Jamie was stunned to be hit with a flood of orders from across the UK. He said the original wedding portrait began as a joke. “We’ve always painted, it’s like a family activity,” he said. “At half-term we’d get the mats and canvasses out and paint something with the kids. “Kate was making a comment about how bad mine were and I said I would paint one for our wedding day, as a joke. It was brought out by the kids during my wedding speech and everyone loved it, it was hysterical.”
“As a bit of a joke we set up a Facebook and Instagram account called Terrible Art by Jamie Lee. We sent out the picture, the reaction and a bit of a blurb and it just kind of blew up. We’ve got orders all over England, Scotland, Wales and even Northern Ireland, people all over the country seem to be really enjoying it. We’re at 71 orders now. We joke Kate is head of financial distribution and her bridesmaid Kate is head of marketing.”
Jamie spends around two hours every evening painting his commissioned work, which costs £25, on 10 x 12 inch canvases. He said: “I do it at the dining room table, I haven’t got a space, I don’t have a studio. For me it’s just about the reactions and people have been loving it. I’ve been drawing this way since I was a child, if anything some of the paintings have got a lot worse. This is my standard, there’s no risk of it getting better. I am absolutely not an art teacher.” Kate, 40, added: “It’s just the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen. We’ve had so much fun laughing at his inability to paint.”
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