Christian artist Sam Ryan painted a viral portrait of assassinated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, based on a prayerful photo, completing it overnight just after the tragic assassination. Initially, he had met with massive left-wing backlash, which culminated in losing 100,000 followers due to an Iconic portrait of Trump.
For context, He views Kirk’s death as Christ-like persecution for truth-telling, urging empathy: “He was a human being” who spoke no hate. Ryan attended Kirk’s Arizona memorial, likening it to a bittersweet milestone
In any case, recounting his interaction with Kirk, he remembered, “His DM said, ‘I love it, man. I need to get this for the studio. When are you doing a print of it?’ And that was the last thing I heard from him. Speaking to his desire, he noted, “I wanted to do him a service. The best way I could was to memorialize him for everybody to see and add to his legacy, especially with the reference photo that I used from Dan Fleuette of Charlie praying. I felt that was the perfect reference that represented him.”
Additionally, Ryan said, “That was a way for me to show my respect to him and his family — to put that out there for him. “All for painting somebody I had a personal connection with. It wasn’t really a political statement, even though I am conservative. It was more of a personal sentiment for his family and something God’s given me the ability to do — to paint and do portraiture in the style that I do that attracts attention somehow.”
Building on this point, he remembered his run-in with left-wing cancel culture. “I gained over a million total followers across all my platforms… I think a couple of hundred thousand per platform. A lot of the time, people don’t want to hear the truth — they want to be comforted. I think he shook a lot of demons that are hiding in the world out there, and they took him out because of that. Jesus, it only took 12 [disciples] for Him to spread the message — and Charlie had a lot more than 12 getting the word out,” the artist noted.
Describing the backlash, he said, “When you get all those eyeballs on you, there are a lot of crazy people in the audience that just hate you for spreading the message of the gospels. Anything that makes people feel something is what inspires me, and I hope to just spread the good in the world and block out the bad.”
Concluding his comments, he said, “The faith-driven painter said that he hopes those who unfollowed him are able to see that Kirk was a ‘human being, and he didn’t deserve that.’ Because to me, and what I know, he never said anything hateful, racist, like you’ve been seeing all these clips. He never said anything that was downright wrong. I would just like to tell them that he was a human being too. And I have a heart — that’s something a lot of people don’t have. They can’t get over their emotions over political sides.”
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