{"id":901215,"date":"2026-10-31T15:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/901215\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T15:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:58:11","slug":"matlacha-store-owner-says-artist-vandalized-mural-after-being-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/901215\/","title":{"rendered":"Matlacha store owner says artist vandalized mural after being fired"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Muhammad<\/a>MATLACHA, Fla. \u2014<\/p>\n

A Matlacha business owner says an artist she hired painted over a mural at her store after she ended their working relationship over a missed deadline.<\/p>\n

Penny Orren, owner of Trashy Treasures on Pine Island Road, said the artist covered the unfinished mural with white paint and wrote \u201cNO PAY\u201d on the building\u2019s exterior.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s depressing. I hate white. My store is so colorful because I like color and vibrancy. That\u2019s why I came to Matlacha. I love the colorful vibes,\u201d Orren said.<\/p>\n

Orren said the artist was halfway through the mural but missed the agreed-upon deadline, so she ended their working relationship. She said the damage has affected her business.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot one sale. People come in, but they just ask me about the building, and nobody\u2019s, like, giving sales,\u201d Orren said.<\/p>\n

She said she is treating the scene like a crime scene and cannot clean up the damage until the investigation is complete.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was excited to come to the business, and now I\u2019m ready to quit. I don\u2019t want this,\u201d Orren said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Gulf Coast News<\/p>\n

Mural before being painted over with white paint, <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The artist, Yoslin Ofarril, who is based in Bokeelia, acknowledged painting over the mural. He said Orren had not paid him in full and had told him to retrieve his belongings from the back of the store, before November 6th or should consider him trespassing. <\/p>\n

\u201cI picked up my stuff before the date that she gave me so I wouldn’t be trespassing and I did a special design for her that I\u2019ve done only twice in my life. It\u2019s called a whitewash. It\u2019s when you paint a mural, well, a whole month you don\u2019t get paid, and you just whitewash it,\u201d Ofarril said.<\/p>\n

Ofarril said he was frustrated because he had completed much of the project and had only a few details left on the mural.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work that\u2019s been done already besides the mural, just for this whole project. So why do you change your mind at this moment, when all I literally have to do is finish a couple fish and sign it? It\u2019s like two days of work at most,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ofarril added that he worked hard on the project, and did more than what Orren paid for. She only wanted to pay half the price. <\/p>\n

“I’m thinking this lady have done this before, she’s too comfortable doing this and the way she handle it was just to me was so disrespectful. I just couldn’t be the bigger person, I even told her at one point, I think I should finish the mural, because the town and the city is expecting it to be finished,” Ofarril added. <\/p>\n

Ofarril says he documented everything including the texts, he feels like he did nothing wrong. <\/p>\n

“Now you going out of your way to damage my character, my reputation and what I do. So at that point, I just couldn’t let it go,” he said. <\/p>\n

The Lee County Sheriff\u2019s Office confirmed its 1st Precinct Crime Section is actively investigating the incident. Deputies are interviewing the people involved, and the assigned detective is staying in regular contact with Orren.<\/p>\n

An incident report obtained Friday states the damage was estimated at $4,000. Orren also reported a stolen sign valued at $250.<\/p>\n

DOWNLOAD\u202fthe free\u202fGulf Coast News app<\/a>\u202ffor your latest news and alerts on breaking news, weather, sports, entertainment, and more on your phone or tablet. And check out the Very Local Gulf Coast app<\/a> to stream news, entertainment and original programming on your TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MATLACHA, Fla. \u2014 A Matlacha business owner says an artist she hired painted over a mural at her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[12566,228,226,227,26096,24402,38385,229,88,10072,16641,377463,30101,377462,3590,41755,2986,15186,377464],"class_list":["post-901215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-artist","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-building","tag-damage","tag-deadline","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-incident","tag-late-news","tag-matlacha-store-owner","tag-mural","tag-penny-orren","tag-people","tag-store","tag-weather","tag-work","tag-yoslin-ofarril"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}