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Jodi Arias is serving life in prison for brutally slaying her boyfriend but is still able to sell her artwork from behind bars for thousands of dollars.
Arias, 44, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 2015. She killed her boyfriend Travis Alexander in 2013 after stabbing him 30 times, slitting his throat and leaving his body in the shower in his Phoenix-area home.
Now she has been posting prints on her website and Instagram account, where buyers can purchase her pieces, which range from $34 to $2,500.
On her Instagram account, @artbyjodiarias, she has posted dozens of her works with captions explaining what inspired the art, what the colors signify, and what the titles mean.
One of her prints features a close-up of a cow in a green field with a multi-shaded blue background on an 8x8 canvas. “An officer interested in the painting’s progress kept asking how ‘ol girl’ was coming along,” the Instagram caption read. “She said it several times and it clicked: that’s the title!”
The convicted killer said she has had a “life-long love affair with art,” according to her website.
She said she returned to art as a creative outlet in prison: “The women in jail would sit for me and I practiced drawing their portraits. Sometimes, I practiced on their skin by giving them tattoos.”
Arias wrote to her brother from prison, her bio says, asking him to sell her works on eBay, which helped her with her “commissary expenses.” She added: “I often felt hungry in jail, and my family could do little to financially support me, an adult who should have been feeding herself.”
After eBay banned the sales of her works “On the grounds that I was a felon,” so she decided to launch her own site.
The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, where Arias is incarcerated, told The New York Post that while it is aware of Arias’ art venture, it isn’t illegal.
Although most of the comments on her Instagram show support for the incarcerated killer, a few expressed disdain for her side hustle.
“Y’all know she unalived someone right,” one user remarked, breaking up a flood of praise for Arias’ art and concern for her wellbeing.
Another user wrote: “All of u supporting her know ur goign to hell one day right?”
