Is plagiarism taught in Art School? Samantha Beeston wins prizes with traced work.

It's been brewing all weekend, it looks like Samantha Beeston, a young British artist, won the Textprint illustration prize with patterns that were directly traced from Lauren Nassef's and other artists work. Not "inspired by", but traced. Like the Nazi Meat.
Samantha's own website has gone offline, and she's mysteriously missing from the lineup of Textprint winners - the group shot has six people but there are only five winners listed now.

Book by it's cover has the many examples side by side, and happens to be a friend of the copied illustrator Lauren Nassef whose rock-solid online portfolio speaks volumes on its own. Samantha's work seems to have copied from the Woodpigeon Songbook as well.

youthoughtwewouldn'tnotice blog has posted some of the images side by side in the post Samantha Beeston Traces Her Way To Glory: I thought I would create this post for posterity then, so that even if Beeston manages to erase all trace of her terrible theft there would still be this proof.

Even her sketchbook is full of traced, copied and perhaps even photocopied items (making more of a scrap book IMHO)

Samantha went to Falmouth, a school with quite a good reputation, and she got high marks. How will this affect the school reputation? Did they not discuss that line between being inspired and plain plagiarizing?

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JulianG's picture

Texprint have released an official statement stripping Samantha Beeston of the Award and announce new winner -

http://www.ftape.com/media/?p=2445

Dabitch's picture

TEXPRINT regrets it has had to take the decision of removing Samantha Beeston from its roster of star designers for 2009.
Unfortunately we have had to make this decision, as it came to our attention that Samantha’s work bears too much of a resemblance to that of other designers and illustrators.
Samantha will not be joining the other designers in Paris at Indigo (part of Premiere Vision) and she is no longer the beneficiary of the Colour Prize.
Barbara Horspool, creative director of high street fashion giant New Look has now selected LISA STANNARD as winner of the COLOUR Prize, donated by long-time TEXPRINT supporters PANTONE EUROPE. Barbara commented, “I was delighted with Lisa’s use of both bold and muted shades teamed with her delicate almost naïve drawings.”
Julius Schofield
Chairman
TEXPRINT

Thanks for that JulianG. Glad to see that the runner up got awarded.

Ronnie's picture

Well, plagiarism has become a serious issue in almost every academic filed, including the work of fine arts. What if someone copies the ideas from the other artists and create the exact replica, and claim it to be his original painting? There is no such plagiarism checker available in the market that can help checking the attempts of plagiarism in artwork.

Dabitch's picture

Tried tineye.com?