A Wanganui artist says he did not breach copyright by reproducing a photo of a convicted murderer.
Mark Rayner's hand-hooked woollen carpet portrait of Helen Milner, called Black Widow, was a finalist in this year's Wallace Art Awards.
Questions have been raised over whether the image was copied from a photograph taken by a New Zealand Herald photographer during Milner's trial. Milner was found guilty of murdering her second husband in December.
Yesterday, Mr Rayner described his widely-acclaimed work as a "reworking of a well-circulated media image".
"The source material has been manipulated, colour-changed and cropped and then re-interpreted as a large latch-hook rug," he told the Chronicle. "The artwork is in an obviously different medium with the intention of eliciting a completely different response from the viewer."