The portraits are listed for auction on Trade Me, where 10% of profits are expected to be donated to Hospice New Zealand.
Act leader David Seymour wrote “not quite me but nice art” across Auckland-based Jason Hoyt’s portrait when he was asked to sign it. Photo / Trade Me
Taking to the r/newzealand forum over the weekend, a Reddit user purporting to be Hoyt said he had attempted to get each leader’s signature on their respective portraits before they went to auction.
“I waited for about an hour at one of David Seymour’s public meetings then showed him his portrait,” Hoyt wrote.
“A look of disgust came over his face almost immediately and he said, ‘Why would you paint Ayn Rand in the background? I don’t like Ayn Rand!’”
Rand was a prominent Russian-born American intellectual whose promotion of individualism and free-market capitalism has made her an influential (albeit often controversial) figure among libertarians.
“I explained ChatGPT had incorrectly told me he was a fan of the Russian writer and philosopher and that I could change it easily enough if he wanted,” Hoyt wrote.
“He was still unhappy and said I’d made him look too sad in the portrait also.”
Hoyt said he had spent around 15 hours completing Seymour’s piece, so the Act leader’s reaction took him by surprise.
Act leader David Seymour wrote “not quite me but nice art” across Auckland-based Jason Hoyt’s portrait when he was asked to sign it. Photo / Trade Me
“He said, ‘Look, I’ll still sign it’, but instead of just signing his name as requested, he wrote in thick black marker across the painting ‘not quite me but nice art – D Seymour’,” Hoyt wrote.
“He must have felt a bit bad, as when I was walking out the door he called out, ‘Great painting though … what did you use to make it?’
“I was over the interaction, so just said ‘paint and stuff’ and walked out.”
While Hoyt said he was “a bit taken aback” by Seymour’s comments, he conceded he should have researched further before including the bust of Rand.
“But it might make the painting more interesting to have his unsolicited art criticism written across it.”
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