The recent discovery of a provocative painting depicting US President Bill Clinton in a blue women’s dress in the house of the deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein turned out to be a big surprise to the painter, Fox News reported Friday.
Petrina Ryan-Kleid, who painted the picture entitled “Parsing Bill,” in 2012, said the New York Academy of Art sold the picture to an anonymous buyer as a part of fundraiser and she lost track of the painting’s whereabouts. She explained that the picture, as well as another depicting US President George W. Bush playing with paper planes, was painted as a part of her Master’s thesis.
“In 2012, as a grad student at the New York Academy of Art, I painted pictures of Presidents Bill Clinton and [George W.] Bush as part of my Master’s thesis," Ryan-Kleid told Fox News. "When the school put on a fundraiser at the Tribeca Ball that year, they sold my painting to one of the attendees. I had no idea who the buyer was at the time. As with most of my paintings, I had completely lost track of this piece when it was sold seven years ago. So it was a complete surprise to me to learn yesterday that it wound up in Epstein’s home.”
Clinton repeatedly visited Epstein, with at least 27 flights revealed by flight logs, according to Fox. A Clinton representative staunchly denied that the former president was aware of Epstein’s criminal activities involving underage girls. The representative reportedly insisted that all Clinton’s trips to Epstein’s residences took place before the convicted sexual offender was accused of soliciting underage prostitution in 2008.
It remains unclear why Epstein had the bizarre painting hanging in his house. Other strange decorations discovered in his Manhattan residence included a mannequin clad in wedding gown hanging from the ceiling, human-sized chess pieces and various nude paintings, Fox News reported Friday.
Epstein was found dead in his cell on 10 August in what appears to be a suicide. He was arrested in 2018 and charged with the sex trafficking of girls. He boasted of his connections with powerful people and claimed he had “dirt” on his acquaintances, sparking theories that outside interference was involved in his suicide.