Podcast - Art, Law and the Athlete: Protecting Equine Imagery in the Studio and Market

Kayla Pragid: Welcome to today's episode of "The Tack Room," where we bring together the worlds of both equine art and law, and we're going to explore the fascinating intersection of kind of creativity on one end and intellectual property rights on the other. So I am so thrilled to have with us two distinguished guests today who are going to help us unpack this complex landscape that's often navigated by visual artists. 

So first, I want to welcome Kyle Lucks. He's a nationally recognized portrait artist known for his very bold, kind of high-impact paintings of professional athletes, musicians, historical figures, cultural icons and my favorite, equine-centric art. And that's why he's on our equine podcast today. And his work has been said to capture emotion, grit, energy, that really defines the greatness and transforms the kind of unforgettable moments of these powerful visual stories with athletes and animals. Kyle creates both commissioned pieces that capture personal connections between owners and their horses, which are my personal favorite, as well as he has his own original works that he celebrates kind of equestrian culture and noble figures in the equine world. So I'm very excited to hear about his equine artwork and how he came into it.

Joining our conversation is Terry Middlebrook. She's an intellectual property attorney here at Holland & Knight specializing in both trademark and copyrights. And she deals a lot with visual art law here in the LA office of Holland & Knight. And she's been practicing for almost 47 years, though her personality, you would never know it, she's a spring chicken. And she has experience advising artists, galleries and collectors, often folks like Kyle, and she brings invaluable experience on copyright, trademark and licensing issues specific to the art world. Terry is particularly qualified to discuss equine art because she herself is a former horse show mom. Her daughter competed in hunter jumper from eight [grade] all the way through high school, went through college, took horses to college, did eventing through college and graduate degrees, and even got a degree in equine nutrition. Terry is a proud owner of several pieces of commissioned equine art and is such a great complement to Kyle on our podcast.

So today, we're going to explore kind of a delicate balance between artistic freedom and legal protection and where those two intersect, diving into both kind of practical questions about commissioned art, reference materials, reproduction rights and things like that, as well as whether you can, in fact, do some of these types of arts, commission them, paint them for other people and on your own. And whether you're an artist, a collector or you're simply just interested in the business of art or equine, I think this podcast is going to deliver some amazing insights into both the artistic piece of it and also the legal boundaries that you need to be in if you are in this space.

So that's enough about the podcast and me. I want to turn now to Kyle and Terry and welcome to The Tack Room. So I'm going to start with you, Kyle. Can you tell us just a little bit about who you are, how you got into equine painting, maybe what your first painting was, just a little bit about you.

Kyle Lucks: Sure. So I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, born and raised. And art runs in my mom's side of the family. So she has a fine art degree. And as long as I can remember, I was doodling and finger painting and all of that. And I had her support outside of school. So I progressed fairly quickly. And at the same time, St. Louis being a sports town, my dad was a sports fanatic, he was a competitive amateur golfer, I inherited that, and combining the two, when I wasn't playing sports, I was drawing them and it just became a part of my personality. So I was lucky enough to have a drawing published in Sports Illustrated for Kids when I was 12. I started getting commissioned and I got more commissioned in high school. And so I thought this might be a path that I want to take to be a portrait artist and focus on sports. Early in my professional career, I would focus on hockey and baseball and football — that's what we had in St. Louis — and kind of made a name for myself in those areas. And it was really fun to share those moments with the avid sports fans and relive those emotional times in the city. But that started [to] change when I moved to South Florida about five years ago. South Florida has different sports than St. Louis, as you might imagine. There's more golf and tennis down here. And to my surprise, the equestrian world really struck me. I met some friends in Wellington. They were photographers, they were artists, they were jumpers, they had horses. And so it didn't take long until I was just mesmerized by these animals and the sports that they were involved in. So I decided to try my hand at it to switch from what I was normally painting and do a different type of athlete. So the first one I did was this show jumper. And I thought I was doing a big painting. It was 40 by 60 inches, which is five feet. That's on the bigger side for my work. And then you compare it to an actual horse and it still looks small. But with my bold abstract backgrounds, painting this horse in a way that a lot of people hadn't seen, it got rave reviews right away from those that know horses and I was inspired and encouraged to keep going. And so I've developed a handful of series since in color and black and white and on some scarves that I think we're going to talk about in a little bit.

Kayla Pragid: Great. I will say that my first introduction to you, Kyle, was stalking you a little bit on Instagram. And I saw your equine portrait, and that's what got me so interested in your art. So I'm so excited to hear about how you got into it and to learn more about it as you keep going. So Terry, tell us a little about yourself and how you get involved in intellectual property law relating to art specifically, and how that kind of intersects with your practice at Holland & Knight.

Terry Middlebrook: I thought it was interesting when Kyle was saying that he grew up in a family of art. Well, I grew up a family of law. My father was patent attorney, and in a large Catholic family like ours, we got together every night around dinner and he would talk about various cases and various issues. I went to law school and I got my first high-paying job — it was great — in international banking with a big firm. After an appropriate amount of time, I left that and went right back to IP and have been doing copyright and trademarks since that time. At some point early in my career, I was contacted by an artist who was a very successful commercial artist for many years. And like everything, things go out of style and there were a little bit of troubles. I helped her out, figuring out how to get out from underneath an obligation to one particular gallery. And we are still friends today, I still help her today. She referred me to a photographer who had a problem with an image license, and we worked that out, and then it grew from there. I've done a lot of licensing into the television world, oddly enough. Very interesting, and you never know what's going to come around the corner.

Kayla Pragid: That's great. It sounds like you both got into your kind of specialized areas by happenstance. You had a love for something, and then an opportunity came forth, which is really refreshing. So I want to talk now, Kyle, to you a little bit about your commissioned painting. So I was very moved by some of the artwork that I saw on your website, where it looked like, and I know now from talking to you, was commissioned. And so can you just explain to the listeners what is a commissioned piece versus a non-commissioned piece? And typically, what do you do for a specific buyer? What do buyers look for in those pieces? And what part of your painting practice is commissioned versus non-commissioned?

Kyle Lucks: Commission is a fancier term for a custom painting. So someone brings their idea to me, and we work together on the size, sometimes the colors, if they need to match the existing decor, and whatever else they want to put in there. I'm using my experience to suggest things that I can do with paint or my signature technique called spot varnish at the end to help really tell the story that they have in their head, but maybe it isn't quite fully fleshed out. And so I balance those paintings, those opportunities, with my own ideas that I want to bring to life. So recently I've done a Jimmy Buffett painting or I have a series of James Bonds. And so that's something that speaks to me that I want to put out there in the world and connect with someone who might have the same emotional background, or they get the goosebumps the same way when they hear the song or they see the movie that I do. And so, that allows me to create something out of thin air. Something they'll want to hang on their walls for the rest of their lives and pass down through generations. So it's about a 50-50 split. I like that balance because if it's too extreme, one way or the other, I'm either in my studio by myself, in my own head, and it can be stressful in that regard. So on the other side of things if I'm just doing other people's ideas then I might get a little stale in what I'm inspired to do, and I want these stories to come out every so often, whether it's my Jackie Kennedy or, like I said, James Bond or the equestrian paintings that I'm doing now. And it's a pretty easy process. Somebody brings their idea to me, usually through photographs, and whether it's a memorial or family photo or something, it's never really perfect by itself. So I use a couple different techniques to create a new composition and arrive at something that I can help them envision on their wall and make sure they're going to be 100 percent happy with what I create.

Kayla Pragid: Kyle, you mentioned to me in a prior conversation that typically you get your inspiration from photographs and you use a method called Frankensteining, which I found so interesting, especially for someone who is painting essentially real-life figures. You know, you're taking real pictures and you're turning them into incredible artwork. Can you just tell us or describe to us what that is and why you use it and how it works? I found it so interesting.

Kyle Lucks: I learned pretty early on, I had some great teachers in high school, and when they saw what I was really drawn to, the sports art and using photographs, I was given some guidance to make it my own, to adapt it enough to where I'm not recreating somebody's photograph inch by inch and where it's not indistinguishable and it's nothing original. I've always had that in the front of my mind and making it look like my work. So in order to do that I have to use the combination of photographs and the more the better, right? Because then you can't trace it back to one or two famous photos that might've been on the cover of a magazine or a movie poster. And especially with my sports paintings, I always want to show that athlete in their home uniform colors because that's what most fans know and that's what they can connect to. So I would change the jersey color, maybe add accessories that they had in one game versus another and make it so that image didn't exist if you looked it up on Google. So after doing that with five, 10, 20 photographs, it really is like Frankenstein-y. It's a complete hodgepodge of different reference material, but when I use Photoshop, I can see it finished, I know what it's going to look like, and it gives me at least a bit of a sketch that I can present to my collector and say, "Here's the idea, here's the proposition, trust me to bring this to life in my style." And that's the way that I can make sure I'm playing it safe in the world of intellectual property law. And also show respect to my fellow creatives that if they took a photograph, I'm not trying to impede on their chance to sell that or make money from it. I'm using it as inspiration for my own work.

Kayla Pragid: Kyle, are there ever times when you do feel like you need to get permission from the photographer, even when you're Frankensteining or maybe when you are not and you're using an actual photo?

Kyle Lucks: Yes, there are times when I've had a client ask for something that was a famous photograph. It was a cover of Time magazine and it was a photograph of Pat Tillman, who was the Arizona Cardinal who decided to serve in the military and was killed in action. And I was at Arizona State in school at the time and was doing this for a charity run. It made perfect sense to paint this photograph. It was so well known. It captured his spirit and his legacy, but there was really no way to Frankenstein it. So because it was such a prominent photograph, I did reach out to the photographer and say: "Hey, this is the opportunity. I'm not going to be using this really for my own benefit. It's to help raise money for Pat's run. Is this something you're OK with?" And then I had another one recently where I was painting a member of a royal family and again that photograph is out there so much that I was like, well, this could easily get back to the photographer because the way I wanted to tell that story of the royal, I couldn't change it a whole lot. I needed to be fairly accurate. The problem with painting famous people is if it doesn't look like the person, people know it. It's like, oh, it looks like so-and-so's brother, it's not the person you're trying to paint. So I have to be accurate and therefore I do have to find ways to either get permission or change the photo enough. So that was the second one recently that I got permission from the photographer and he was very complimentary of my final painting. And nice to also share that experience with a fellow creative that was at a very high level.

Kayla Pragid: And I'm sure he also asked you for a great copy of that amazing painting you just painted.

Terry, I want to turn attention to the legal framework that artists have to operate within and how can artists legally use photographic references in their art like what Kyle was describing with both Frankensteining and direct copying of pictures.

Terry Middlebrook: It depends upon the source of the photograph. The safest way for an artist to practice is to go out and take their own photographs of the horse or the person. And that's very possible in the equine world because you're going to get commissions from moms and dads who think their horse and their child are [the] cutest in the world. You can do that. Those parents can give a photograph, but that's when you have to look at it. If it's one clearly that they took or perhaps a friend of theirs took, you just document that they gave you permission. If it is a professional image, then you really have to be careful. Just assume it will be recognized once you've converted into your own style. You do need permission. If you find something on the internet and just think it's great, my advice is don't you dare. You're asking for trouble. Nobody knows where the internet pictures came from. And finally, as Kyle was saying, whatever you take, if you take it enough so that you can't recognize it anymore, you've probably transformed it enough.

Kayla Pragid: And Terry, what is the legal difference between copyright infringement and trademark infringement with respect to art? Because I think folks, non-lawyers somehow get copyright and trademark, the terms, interchangeably confused. So which one applies to art, is it one or both?

Terry Middlebrook: Oh, it's just one and that happens all the time. Even judges confuse patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret. A good way to look at it is visual art is protected in the area of what it looks like. You look at a picture, it is the appearance of the picture. Trademark would be the name in the bottom right of that image that says Joe Smith, who is the artist. Or if it's an outline of three circles in a particular position, that means it's Disney. A trademark indicates source, we like to say. Copyright indicates what it looks like. We really can't say what it looks like anymore, because now copyright includes things like software, where you can't really see it. But the same concept is there. If you could touch it because it's fixed, copyright. If you can't touch it, it just tells you where it came from, that's trademark. Visual arts is really a copyright issue, but it can go into trademark as well.

Kayla Pragid: Kyle, you touched on both commissioned and non-commissioned art. And I'm wondering what rights you retain when you do a commissioned piece. So for example, if someone gives you a family photograph by a professional photographer, and you get permission from the photographer, and then you turn it into essentially a copy of the photo. So you didn't Frankenstein it, it's really similar. Now you have your own rights, because now you have your painting and they have their photograph. And so do you have these discussions with clients about reprints and what they can do to reproduce your pictures and how that works?

Kyle Lucks: Yes, so as the creator of the work, the painting and my style, I have the copyright to that image, and it's documented. I give a certificate of authenticity. Usually, if it gets posted, then I have a digital time stamp for it in order for me to retain the rights and to make sure that if it is reproduced it's in my standard of quality. I don't let them just take the image and take a photograph and print on their own. I'm happy to do that, but it is in the copyright. It's on my certificate that says they don't have that permission to do it. But I've had a number of projects where it's either part of the commission originally, where maybe it's a family and they're all chipping in to give the grandfather a painting of the grandchildren. And there's only one that the grandfather will receive, but each of the grandchildren might want to copy, might want to print on a special occasion. So in that regard, I'll do reproductions upfront and ship those with the painting, and then therefore they can have them when they need them. And then on the back end I've had paintings, I've done one they didn't ask for the reproduction initially but then a year or two later they said well this person has passed, or we thought of another opportunity, we'd like to make a copy of this for so-and-so, can you help us with that, and I'm always prepared for that. I photograph my work as high resolution as possible, in case those opportunities come up, but also just for my own documentation. You never know when an image is going to need to be used or submitted for any reason.

Kayla Pragid: Kyle, on the opposite side of that, are there ever times when you have done a commissioned piece of work maybe for an athlete, and then someone sees your amazing artwork and another unrelated person asks for a reprint of that? And in such an instance, would you decline, or would you go to the athlete and ask for the ability to reprint it, or do you just maintain that right as the artist?

Kyle Lucks: I maintain it as the artist. I've had some commissions where the person asked if I could not do that. And I respect that, I honor it, but I do have the right to make prints of my own work, regardless if it's a commission or something I do on my own. But I don't shy away from any kind of conversation if it does come up with a collector and they're wondering what I might be doing with this image. Especially if it's a memorial, if it's something really personable, if it is that deep of a commission, it's not something I want to promote anyway on my website and try to find other people that might connect with this moment in sports or pop culture or something. It's a little bit different scenario and I don't even touch it. So that's where I draw the line on whether or not I promote it on my website or even on Instagram. So there are a number of paintings that I've done that no one's ever seen. And for good reason: They're incredibly personable to the client.

Kayla Pragid: Terry, turning back to you, so, you know, Kyle just described his process for ensuring that he's getting permissions and providing appropriate reprints. What rights do artists automatically retain when they're creating a commissioned piece of artwork? And then what rights should they put in a contract like the ones Kyle just discussed to preserve reproduction rights so that they're protected?

Terry Middlebrook: Let's assume that we have an equine piece that is based upon a photograph that is taken by a professional. And let's assume that Kyle has asked the photographer who said, I think it's fabulous, but please let me have a copy, a couple of copies. I want to post them someplace and I want to be able to use them in advertising. Now, the first things first, put it in writing. Including Kyle saying, "I want to be able to make reproductions." Anything not in writing is, as they say, worth the paper it's written on, which is nothing. And memories do fade. Recollections differ. So get it in writing.

Kayla Pragid: Terry, without getting too much into the weeds and appreciating and understanding that there are a lot of nuances and sticky issues, at a high level, what advice would you give to artists to be mindful of when they're using their own photos to create art for commercial purposes?

Terry Middlebrook: There is a big restriction. Your artist can use his own photograph in any way he wants, except if the photograph includes people. Then the artist recreation can't include any recognizable or identifiable individuals. You can fade the face, you can remove the person. If you do want to include an identifiable individual, you will need written permission.

Kayla Pragid: So it sounds like get it in writing, keep it in writing, make sure you save it so that if memories fade in the future, you're protected as an artist.

Terry Middlebrook: Absolutely. And the "save it" is one of the most important things. Right now there's a habit of companies scanning documents and throwing the originals away. That is very dangerous. First of all, scanning jobs are not very good. They miss stuff. Scans are illegible. And as a trial lawyer, how the heck are you going to lay a foundation for a bad scan of an agreement that was executed 40 years ago. That gets tough. As far as I am concerned, I recommend to my clients, they can scan all they want, but I really would like to see a book, just a three-ring binder, with all the original agreements in there with the original signatures, and never throw it away. These issues can arise 20, 30, 40, 50 years after the creation of art. And they do arise.

Kayla Pragid: I'm not surprised, and that's great advice. Kyle right now is saving all those original copies as we speak. So Kyle, I want to turn to you a little bit. I've seen your work, and you started making art using silk scarves recently and I thought that was so interesting. You have just such an interesting take on reproduction and art. And I'd love for you to just describe how you came to do that. And describe what it looks like and how you actually make art using the silk scarves.

Kyle Lucks: No, thank you. About a year ago, I was in Palm Beach walking by the Hermès store. And I saw what looked like I thought of the painting at first, but it turned out to be one of their luxury silk scarves stretched from corner to corner hanging in the window. It just really caught my eye because I thought that's a phenomenal design, but also reminds me of my backgrounds. All my paintings start as these bold, colorful, non-objective backgrounds where I have all these drips and splatters, and that's what help gives character to the subject that goes on top, whatever that might be or whoever it might be. And so I did some more research into these scarves and found out that people have them stretched, then framed, and I was like, well, let's give it a shot. Back to the whole not having every single painting being commissioned, I do give myself room to experiment and create new styles. So I had a little bit of a window to experiment on silk. And I got cheap silk. I wasn't going to experiment with a $600 scarf. But I tried it out, and I had a little mad science experiment in my studio and figured out exactly how to do it. So I ended up having to mount the scarf onto a board, so it's never going to be worn again. And then I use my own series of coatings and materials to get it to where I can paint on top. But because of Hermès' background — it was founded as a harness maker in Paris in the mid-1800s, and that's why the logo's a horse — it just made perfect sense to paint horses, my newfound love in my portrait art, on top and to connect the history of Hermès with the action and the power of the horses. So that's how that series came about. And I look for a certain type of scarf that I know is going to work well with a high-contrast horse on top so that you can still see the scarf through it and it gives a lot of character in both regards, the scarf itself, but then also the beautiful horses on top.

Kayla Pragid: Kyle, have you ever had a client bring you a silk scarf of their own and ask you to recreate or draw or paint a picture onto their own scarf? Maybe you had some sentimental family value or something like that.

Kyle Lucks: Yes, and that's starting because this series is only about a year old. The word is still spreading about me accepting commissions, and being in Palm Beach it didn't take long for me to have conversations with people who have collections of these scarves. I've met women with 50 to 100 to 200 vintage scarves that they can't possibly wear anywhere because we live in paradise. So the thought was let's give this scarf a new life. Let's give it a way to hang on your wall as art. If they have horses of their own or they just love how horses look, and we can pick a scarf that would fit and create a composition out of it. So [it's] the beginning stages of that, but that is something I'm entertaining as the series takes off.

Kayla Pragid: Terry, turning back to you, Hermès-inspired art is a hot topic of late. And I know they are an active plaintiff in the litigation arena. So I would be curious for your take on kind of the adaptation and how that can be legally done by an artist.

Terry Middlebrook: Well, with respect to Hermès, yes, they do try to protect their images. In France, there was a group that was taking scarves, cutting them up and upcycling them into jackets. They were sued in France, and in France an injunction was issued that violated the interpretation of copyright in France. I do not know if that would equally violate copyright in the United States, because we look at things very differently. It may have the same name, but it's applied in very different manners. Hermès also, as everyone knows, just went after someone who decided he wanted to make NFTs of Birkin bags and call them MetaBirkins. In the U.S., that went forward as a trademark case rather than a copyright case, although it could have, because it was the image of a Birkin bag. And a jury found that he was infringing. I happened to know U.S. litigation counsel who does a lot of these Hermès cases, they're very aggressive. A lot of it is pick the brand owner that you're going to copy from. Some really don't care. Some really do care. And Hermès is one of those that really does care. Now what Kyle is doing sounds to me like he's completely transforming things. This is not legal advice, Kyle. I don't know what else you're up to, but this is it sounds like you are completely transforming that scarf into something else.

Kayla Pragid: Terry, what are some common legal pitfalls for visual artists that you see from a risk management and kind of litigation prevention perspective?

Terry Middlebrook: There are a couple. The first is to not understand the concept of fair use. Fair use means that there is an exemption that allows you to do what you're doing with somebody else's proprietary image. Now, the prima facie case of copyright infringement is there's an owner and there's a copier and the copier didn't have consent. So that's all you need. And it's also strict liability statute. Fair use does not mean "I'm a fair person and I want to use it." That is not what it means. There are very limited times when fair use is going to help you. It's much better practice to ask first than be caught up in litigation afterwards. The second problem that I see is contracts that are not documented. Oral contracts or written contracts that are thrown away after 10 years because whatever, it's old paper. Don't throw them away. And then finally, public domain. You need to remember that copyright lasts a long time. Used to be 35 years. Now it's 99 up to maybe about 150 years. And you're going to get the claims made not by the original artist, but by their grandchild who inherits the rights. They will come out of the woodwork and all of a sudden you will figure out that there's somebody with an adverse claim to Superman. And you're going to have to deal with it. So don't misunderstand public domain. Just because it's old doesn't mean you can use it.

Kayla Pragid: Along those lines, Terry, what are some basic, easy, legal documents that every artist should have to protect them from these types of issues?

Terry Middlebrook: They really need form agreements that are written by a professional. This is not something you should do yourself if you are not a trained intellectual property lawyer. Don't go to the divorce lawyer down the street and get them. It's going to be messed up. If you don't want to do that — and a lot of artists really don't want to do that, or they have to wait until there's enough of a revenue stream to warrant that kind of investment, because it can be expensive — there are books that a visual artist can go out and buy. Tad Crawford has a book, it's going into its sixth edition, I think, it's called Legal Guide for the Visual Artist. Very simple. He has some forms in there. If you have that on your desk and you have a question come up, that's a really good reference because they'll give you very good advice. There's also another book, the Graphic Artist Guild has a handbook of pricing and ethical guidelines. They're going into their 17th edition. That's a fabulous resource. It not only gives you pricing, what things are worth, that will give you a guideline of how much you can claim from someone who has taken your artwork and put it on a hang tag or made a new corporate logo. And finally the ethical guidelines are very, very practical. Part of the trouble here is there's plagiarism and then there's infringement. Plagiarism can be infringement, but sometimes it's not. Plagiarism is a social violation and an academic violation, but it's not necessarily a legal violation. You really need to keep those straight in your mind, and the handbook and the ethical guidelines are very helpful in that regard.

Kayla Pragid: Terry, you just talked about some really great tools that artists have. What particular procedural steps  — the nut and bolts  — can an artist do to protect their work?

Terry Middlebrook: In the world of copyright, you have to remember that it is statutory and that means it is like civil law. There are lots and lots of little things that you need to do in order to have protection. You don't even have to use a C in a circle any longer on a piece of artwork in order to technically own the copyright. But can you enforce the copyright in the U.S.? Not really. So you don't want your rights to be, on a scale of 1 to 10, you don't want them to be around 1. Now, if you were to go out and register your artwork with the Copyright Office, and it's $95 apiece, as soon as you make it, if you're going to go into reproductions, then if someone after the fact starts making reproductions, your protection is right up there at 10. You can get attorney's fees, statutory damages, injunctions, everything else. If you find an imprinter and you have not yet registered your copyright, you can't even sue them until the registration is issued. And the registration issuing is usually about four to six months unless you pay the extra $600 or $700 fee to get issued within one month. And then you can sue someone. You'll be thrown out of court. The best thing to do is keep an eye on what's selling well. If there's something selling well, if there's a particular image that seems to be striking home a lot, you better run out and you better register it, even if it's a little late. Just register it because then you will be able to enforce your copyright in a realistic and worthwhile manner. Otherwise, you just have a story to tell at cocktail parties, and it's kind of sad.

Kayla Pragid: And Terry, if someone creates a piece of art, does not register it, someone that infringes on it, as you just mentioned, and then they go register it, are they protected and can sue that person that infringed before it was registered, or is it only going forward? 

Terry Middlebrook: That is an interesting question, and the answer is sometimes and maybe. And for a long time, it was pretty much assumed that once you had an application pending, then most judges would give you a fine and they'd let the case move forward and they'd even issue injunctions and threaten damages and things like that, which they had no power to grant. Now we do know that the registration must be issued and we're getting more and more guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court on what copyright statutes mean. But it is a constantly evolving field. That is one of the reasons that some of these plaintiffs really don't know where their rights begin and where they end. But if you're an artist and you've got something that looks like it's going to be a commercial success, for crying out loud, register it. I think every artist sort of knows which one's a hit.

Kayla Pragid: Very good advice, Terry, for up-and-coming artists and artists that maybe just want to take a second look at what they're doing and make sure that they're dotting their i's and crossing their t's. We're getting ready to close out, and I want to close out, Kyle, by talking to you a little bit about social media because as I mentioned at the beginning, that's how I first learned about you and was so intrigued by your work. So how has social media both helped you to protect and promote your work?

Kyle Lucks: Well, it's been a game changer ever since Instagram took off and since I joined it. I've historically been a late adopter to social media because I want to just create. I don't want to create about creating. I want just do my paintings and sell them. But once I really dove into the world of getting my work in a way that I can share it with thousands of people at once, it did help find new collectors, get people to my website and really help grow my business. The downside of that is it moves so quickly that by the time something is reshared four or five times between people, people that don't follow you, the attribution to the original creator can quickly get lost. And I can't do much about it within the platform, but because it's so easy to take pictures of things these days and to post them online without any kind of credit to what you're taking the photo of, if I have a show or something, I just ask people, hey, if you're going to take a photo, you're welcome to, but please tag @kylelucksfineart. Just let people know that this is my painting and if they're curious, they know how to find me. I think it's evolving in the right way. AI has certainly thrown a wrench in things and how quickly that's moving, but I've also seen apps and guardrails in place that pick up on when an image is incorrectly used, if it infringes on copyright, like Etsy has a new tool, I think, that knows if you have a claim to something, it'll snatch it up right away. That's at least some peace of mind that if you're a creator and you put something out there and you own the copyright or you own a trademark, it can get flagged quicker than how it used to be and it may go under the radar for a while. So that's at least, I think, a positive of how quickly all this digital world is unfolding.

Kayla Pragid: That is an interesting point, and I do wonder how even AI is going to change the ability of artists to protect their copyright and trademark. It was such a pleasure learning about your passion for art, Kyle, and how you really just transformed equestrian pictures into such memorable lifetime artwork, and Terry, thank you so much for joining to provide really some best practices for artists. Kyle, I can't wait to see where you go, and I hope one day I have the ability to work with you on a commissioned piece of art or buy one of your non-commissioned pieces of art because I just think the art is so incredibly beautiful and you have really just changed the way people see horses and the equestrian space here in South Florida, but I'm sure nationwide, so thank you for joining us, Terry and Kyle, and be well.