AN artist from Barford St Martin saw his freedom of expression blocked when attempting to display his latest work.
Roy Wilde created an acrylic painting depicting the heads of Tesla mogul Elon Musk, American President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take part in an exhibition taking place in the library’s gallery 4.
Around the characters are a series of words such as evil, greed, hate and apathy.
The painting’s message finishes by stating: ‘Democracy is a tender flower easily damaged by neglect and abuse’.
The artist recently staged an impressive range of his landscape paintings at the Salisbury Museum.
The painting that he intended to show, rather than being contentious, is designed to be thought-provoking and questions the role of democracy which, in Roy’s opinion, is rapidly being eroded across the world.
Roy’s inspiration for this particular work was triggered by anger after he watched the much-viewed interview on television with Donald Trump, US Vice President J D Vance and Ukrainian President President Zelenskyy.
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Mr Wilde said: “The motivation for this picture was that I was morally shocked by the way President Zelenskyy was treated by a western leader – it was humiliation with no grounds.
“As an exhibitor at the Salisbury Library, I was appalled that this particular picture could not be included in our art show – despite the title of the exhibition being ‘Our Voices in Paint’, although other examples of my work are included.
“Freedom of expression in art and creativity is vital. It opens up debate and discussion and we should not start to ban creative works arbitrarily. It is a dangerous path to follow.
“We should value this local community space, where all opinions should be considered a healthy element. We live in an ‘open society’, where a spectrum of opinion is important. We now seem to specialise in not upsetting people.
“We must be able to speak out without fear of hurting people’s feelings. This risk aversion is preventing a mature and sensible debate and is not beneficial to society.”
Wiltshire Council, which manages the library, declined to comment on the matter but pointed to its policy on neutrality.
It states: “Exhibitions should not be political, religious nor support campaigns that could compromise the neutrality of the library space or seek to influence the viewpoints of library users.”
Mr Wilde has spent many years working in watercolour and oils. More recently he has enjoyed working in acrylics, which form the focus of the work being shown by Roy together with 11 other acrylic artists in Gallery 4 in the Library.
Following his disappointment at not showing his democracy picture in the Salisbury Library, he has announced that this picture has now received interest from a potential buyer.
