Brooklyn artist Rusty Zimmerman painted 200 South Brooklyn residents last year – for free.
Zimmerman received more than 650 applications and painted around five portraits per week, all of people who live south of Prospect Park.
The result of that effort is an exhibition called “We Are South Brooklyn,” which features his portraits and is on display at Industry City through March 24.
“I always tell everybody it started from a selfish place,” he told Kousha Navidar on a recent episode of “All of It.”
“I wanted to be a better painter and I knew that would happen with practice,” said Zimmerman.
Zimmerman said that he was charging around $500 for a portrait when this idea began around a decade ago, but reconsidered his approach when a neighbor couldn’t afford the fee.
“It hurt to realize that the thing that I was putting into the world was essentially perpetuating that history of portraiture just reserved for people who could afford a nonessential item,” said Zimmerman.
Zimmerman eventually expanded his idea — instead of just painting individuals, he’d document a community. And after another friend told him about crowdfunding, he asked strangers on the internet to support him. He was able to raise $50,000 within a year to do the work in Crown Heights.
He has been painting Brooklynites ever since.
The portraits are now on view in an exhibition called “We Are South Brooklyn” in Industry City through March 24.
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