SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) – At the “Art Avenue” art gallery, inside the Westfield Southgate mall in Sarasota, cameras caught two men, paintings in hand, as they strolled to the parking lot.
“It’s pretty bold of them to walk right through the middle of the mall and out the doors. So that was more shocking than anything else,” said gallery owner, Paul Sykes.
Sykes discovered a portrait of actor Jack Nicholson, and another one by Montreal artists, missing last Thursday, as he went to lock up.
Cameras captured some artwork of their own: high definition pictures of the art thieves, tattoos and all, as they left.
“I think they walked through the whole mall carrying those two large pieces of art,” said artist and store employee, Victoria Buluva.
Bulava isn’t missing any of her artwork, displayed in the front window and along a gallery wall. She feels bad for the two that are.
“Obviously they took their chances” she said.
The missing paintings are valued at $7,500.
“To me, it’s some kind of crazy behavior, just to do it for the sake of doing. Or they maybe just really like the stuff, it’s a good thing,” said Buluva.
Both thefts happened away from the main store, in an annex, with nobody watching.
That won’t happen again.
“One artists put it beautifully, she said well at least they liked my painting,” said Sykes.
Sykes said his research shows, 1.5% of stolen art is recovered.
He has little hope of getting it back, but he sure would like to see the art thieves caught.
