Opposing sides in one of the art world’s most colorful court cases in years traded verbal barbs outside a Cumberland County courthouse in New Jersey.
Pent-up anger snapped its fragile leash as a white-hot argument darkened. Theodore Morehouse Fleen lashed out at the legal pitbull tormenting him. Avril Snype attorney for the plaintive, maker of a line of gray colors, suing Fleen for patent infringement was visibly shaken when Fleen had to have his fingers pried loose from the neck of the now pallid barrister.
Big Teddy Fleen as he is known to locals in his home town of Buckshutem is the self-proclaimed inventor of a new color he calls Dark White. An amateur artist of some repute, he is known for his renderings of the Eastern Snow Dove esteemed for its unique white coloration.
” I had been searching for a way to render the Snow Dove in its natural habitat, snow. I soon realized I had to come up with a new color to describe my subject,”
said Mr Fleen in an interview with the New Jersey Bird magazine in their feature Giving you the Bird.
Being from New Jersey, Teddy was also a chemistry Whiz, and soon came up with an artist pigment he felt fit the bill. With a beaker full of Dark White he shopped it around only to be given the brush off. He soon came up with his own product line Fleen Dark White.
Fleen White Took the art world by storm but raised the hackles of another color maker. Interviewed in his neutral toned office high atop Gray Towers in Manhattan, President Virgil Slurry head of Slurry Artists Colors said, “No rogue interloper is going to take market share away from gray, beige and sage as long as my heart beats.” He then went on to make some off color remarks that are unprintable here.
A despondent Fleen now in Cumberland County Jail on assault charges was unavailable for comment. Daisy Scrude president of the local arts council said about the affair,
“BigTeddy ran with the rough crowd in our club.”
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