Community Support
People crowd around Wilson when he works and he has been praised by passersby. He has become a local celebrity as his work has chronicled the changes in the neighborhood. He has a large book where he keeps backlogged requests for paintings, such as births and deaths, marriages or some other personal commemoration. He doesn't charge for gum painting requests, a word he prefers to use over "commissions". When he was arrested in 2009 by the City of London Police on suspicion of criminal damage, the case was dropped after dozens of people wrote letters of support a few months later. The Barnet police also came to his support, filing a witness statement on his behalf.
Read more about this topic: Ben Wilson (artist)
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or support:
“Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as “right” in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as “brute force.””
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“I make this direct statement to the American people that there is far less chance of the United States getting into war, if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)