The Unicorn Hunter's Guide to Finding Painters Who Work for Exposure (and Maybe a Bagel)

It start­ed with a sim­ple garage door repaint. 

Doug Aldeen, a long-time Boise native, was on the hunt for a paint­ing com­pa­ny that could take the project off his hands and do it right. All while not break­ing the bank, ideally.

“We live in an uncer­tain econ­o­my,” Aldeen says. ​“Yes, I want­ed the door to look good, but I also couldn’t pay for a pre­mi­um painter with jacked up prices.”

That’s when things got interesting. 

Aldeen’s daugh­ter, a high school junior, showed him a Tik­Tok video of a local painter shar­ing splashy, flashy videos of him­self paint­ing with unlike­ly objects: a rolled up t‑shirt, a broom, even a mod­i­fied leaf blower. 

“I reached out to him and said that if he could do the job, I’d let him take all the pics he want­ed. I meant in addi­tion to pay­ing him, of course, but that’s the crazy thing… He sent me a pro­pos­al with no dol­lar fig­ure. Just num­bers of pho­tos and videos, plus I’m con­trac­tu­al­ly oblig­at­ed to share all of his videos for 3 months. I mean, okay?” 

Hue New Paint­ing arrived four days lat­er, armed with not only drop cloths and tape, but also four GoPros, stu­dio light­ing, and approx­i­mate­ly 13 gal­lons of matcha tea.

Maybe it was a con­tact high from all the avo­ca­do toast waft­ing through his win­dows, but Aldeen sud­den­ly felt inspired. He laid out a table of snacks: all gluten-free, dairy-free, and locally/​ethically sourced. Free range? Of course. He then hid inside his house and watched through the window. 

Over the next three hours, four more paint­ing com­pa­nies showed up, eying the snacks, then the house, then tak­ing explorato­ry self­ies. Each one arrived in either an antique VW or an elec­tric vehi­cle, dri­ven by beard­ed, tat­tooed painters on the hunt for likes. 

“They come for the food and stay for the expo­sure,” Aldeen said, peer­ing through his blinds at a 42-year-old painter named Archer with a PhD in Invis­i­ble Habi­tats. ​“It’s unre­al. There’s a cross­post­ing, hash­tag­ging fren­zy out there. And they just keep coming.”

The garage door took three weeks to paint, unfor­tu­nate­ly, but the results are unde­ni­able. ​“I was a lit­tle wor­ried when it was con­vert­ed into a mur­al,” Aldeen said. ​“But we got back on track when Old Skewl Aes­thet­ics paint­ed it a colo­nial gray.”

Since then, Aldeen has had much of his home paint­ed (and repaint­ed) by the local painters, espe­cial­ly since he received per­mis­sion to host a week­end farmer’s market.

“I’m going to start doing this every spring,” Aldeen says with a smile. ​“Maybe I’ll call it Matcha Madness.”