Knicks Commission Becomes the Center of a Credit Dispute Between Two Artists
A pair of Knicks-themed paintings has sparked a sharp conversation about influence, authorship, and acknowledgment on Instagram. New York watercolorist Gavin Snider says Devon Rodriguez copied two of his works, including a view of Madison Square Garden’s exterior and an interior scene that Snider originally painted for New York or Nowhere last October.
Snider says the similarities are too close to dismiss. In his own account, he built the exterior composition from 67 reference photos, drawing on watch-party snapshots and screenshots from reels to shape the crowd, the foam finger in the lower right corner, and the Knicks flag on the left. He also says Rodriguez later posted a work that closely resembles the interior scene, down to the players gathered on the left side of the court and the Jumbotron message reading “Let’s Go Knicks!”
The dispute comes after Snider completed a Knicks commission ahead of Game 1 on June 3. He said the team shared the painting before the series began and again after the clinching win on Saturday night. Snider also said he was on parental leave with his wife and their three-month-old baby when the Knicks and their marketing agency reached out.
The artist, who grew up in Mulvane, Kansas and moved to New York in 2015, said sports and art have long been intertwined for him. “I’ve always used art as a way to connect to sports and have something to calm my nerves while I watch a stressful game,” he said.
Snider is not asking Rodriguez to remove the posts or stop selling prints. What he wants, he said, is credit — or at least a public acknowledgment that his work served as the inspiration. Rodriguez did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a social media ecosystem where images travel fast and attribution can lag behind, the episode underscores how fragile artistic credit can be once a composition enters the feed.
