Hunter Biden: Painting is ‘literally keeping me sane’
Biden converted the pool house at his $12,000-a-month Hollywood Hills rental into a makeshift studio
Hunter Biden, the embattled son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, came clean in a recent interview about a longstanding passion: painting.
“For years, I wouldn’t call myself an artist,” he told The New York Times. “Now I feel comfortable saying it.”
Biden, 50, has made headlines in recent months – but not for his use of colors and brush strokes. In the midst of his father, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign for president, Hunter Biden’s position working with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings has been brought into question.
HUNTER BIDEN JOINS LIST OF WEST WING KIDS LANDING LUCRATIVE CORPORATE GIGS
His past alcohol and drug addictions and a very public legal battle with Arkansas woman Lunden Roberts, the mother of one of his children, have only fueled the controversy and criticism.
Hunter Biden in 2012 in Danville, Ky. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Painting, he told The Times, is “something I’ve taken seriously for a long time but hasn’t necessarily been for public consumption,” he said, explaining that he began sketching at around 7-years-old.
The reporter visited Biden and his art studio in the fall, according to the report, which was published this past Friday.
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
“The one thing I have left is my art,” he later added. “It’s the one thing they can’t take away from me or conflate with anything else.”
Hunter Biden, left (Getty Images) and Lunden Roberts, right (Arkansas State Basketball)
Biden converted the pool house at his $12,000-a-month Hollywood Hills rental into a makeshift studio, according to the report.
He gets to work on his art in the morning and takes a break in the middle of the day, when he’ll “blast country music,” the Times article states.
“Right now a lot of Sturgill Simpson’s ‘Sound & Fury,’” Biden told the outlet.
Biden met Roberts in 2016 at a Washington, D.C., strip club where she worked at the time, Page Six reported.
He married his now-wife, Melissa Cohen, in May after meeting through a friend less than a week earlier, according to multiple reports.
“I always get my pants dirty,” Biden told the Times. “I don’t even notice it, but Melissa hates it.”
He and Cohen, a filmmaker, are expecting their first child together.
“It’s very abstract, sometimes very dark,” she said of her husband’s artwork.
Biden met Cohen shortly after he split from Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter’s late brother, Beau. He has three kids with his previous wife, Kathleen Buhle, to whom he was married from 1993 and 2017.
WHO IS HUNTER BIDEN'S WIFE, MELISSA COHEN BIDEN?
He acknowledged in the report he had been addicted to crack cocaine for four years and has been in and out of rehab more than a half-dozen times.
“I went through a really long period of addiction and I was at a point where I didn’t read, write, think,” he said. “It keeps me away from people and places where I shouldn’t be.”
HUNTER BIDEN AGREES TO COUGH UP CHILD SUPPORT: COURT PAPERS
Despite efforts to postpone his ongoing court battle with Roberts, a judge ruled last week that Biden must make himself available for a March deposition, according to a report from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
World Food Program USA Board Chairman Hunter Biden and Kathleen Biden in 2016 (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for World Food Program USA)
Biden’s attorney had initially proposed that the deposition date be moved to April 1, saying his client “cannot be available” until then.
“He needs to make himself available and unless his hair is on fire, he needs to be in Arkansas and he needs to be in a deposition,” Independence County Circuit Court Judge Holly Meyer told attorneys during a conference call. “My question to you is, why could your client not be available until after April 1? All the information I have is that he’s unemployed.”
HUNTER BIDEN MUST BE AT MARCH DEPOSITION 'UNLESS HIS HAIR IS ON FIRE': JUDGE
Throughout the court battle, Biden had largely evaded the topic of money and had initially failed to provide Roberts and her attorney with financial documents that were being requested through discovery. His financial records are expected to include those related to his involvement in Burisma.
The Times reported Roberts’ attorney is hoping to determine if Biden is getting paid for his art.