The Staten Island artist’s Independence Day project is part patriotic spectacle, part argument over who gets to claim America’s most recognizable symbol.
Scott LoBaido is not exactly a neutral messenger. The Staten Island artist is an outspoken Trump supporter, and he has built a public profile around patriotic and political art.
That is what makes his latest claim so loaded: while painting a 9-by-17-foot American flag in Washington, D.C., LoBaido says the point is not MAGA, not Democrats, not Republicans. It is the flag itself.
A huge flag, a bigger argument
Fox News Digital reported that LoBaido is putting the finishing touches on what he describes as potentially the largest oil-on-canvas portrait ever made of Old Glory. The work is being created at the Made in America Pavilion during the Great American State Fair in the nation’s capital, part of the broader America 250 celebration.
The painting’s dimensions are the hook: 9 feet by 17 feet, a scale built for cameras, crowds and ceremonial unveiling. LoBaido told Fox News Digital he believes the size and medium may make it a record-setting work, though that claim has not been independently verified in the available reporting.
But the record talk is only part of the story. The sharper tension is that LoBaido is making a giant public flag painting while insisting the flag should not be treated as a partisan logo.
“This flag is for everybody,” LoBaido told Fox News Digital, saying the American flag “does not belong to any particular party.”
The messenger complicates the message
LoBaido’s politics are not incidental to why the story is drawing attention. He is described by Fox News Digital as a pro-Trump artist, and he reportedly said President Donald Trump already owns several of his paintings.
That creates an obvious contradiction for viewers who may see the work through a partisan lens before they see the brushwork. LoBaido appears aware of that. He told Fox News Digital that he is “a political person,” but said that is “irrelevant” to this particular project.
His argument is that the flag should be bigger than the person holding it, painting it or campaigning near it. He also claimed some people on the left “run away from the flag because they think it’s a MAGA symbol,” a view he said misunderstands what the flag represents.
That claim will land differently depending on the reader. For some, it will sound like a defense of shared patriotism. For others, it may sound like a political artist asking to separate a symbol from the political movement that has often embraced it most loudly.
Why the setting matters
The project is unfolding during America’s 250th birthday celebrations, a milestone that gives the painting a ready-made patriotic stage. Fox News Digital reported that LoBaido planned to add final touches on Independence Day before the piece eventually finds a permanent home.
The Great American State Fair has been described in Getty Images caption information cited in the Fox report as a National Mall event running from June 25 to July 10, with exhibits from all 56 states and territories. That kind of setting matters because it frames the painting less as a private artwork and more as a public ritual.
LoBaido leaned into that symbolism, calling the American flag itself “the greatest work of art,” according to Fox News Digital. He said there was no better place to create the piece publicly than at the country’s 250th birthday celebration.
He also floated a high-profile possible destination: the White House ballroom. “Would this not look great in the White House ballroom?” he told Fox News Digital, while also saying that if Trump wanted the painting, the president “might have to open up his checkbook.” LoBaido said he gives “a big portion” of proceeds to charity.
Old Glory has always carried tension
The American flag is one of the country’s most familiar images, but in art it has rarely been simple decoration. It can signal mourning, protest, pride, critique, military service, grief, belonging or exclusion depending on who is using it and where it appears.
The Getty Museum’s library record for the 1994 exhibition catalog “Old Glory: the American flag in contemporary art” is a reminder that artists have been wrestling with the flag’s meaning for decades. The show, held at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, placed the flag inside contemporary art rather than treating it only as civic iconography.
That history helps explain why LoBaido’s painting is more than a very large patriotic canvas. An American flag artwork is almost never just about paint. It is also about who feels represented by the symbol, who feels challenged by it and who gets accused of misusing it.
LoBaido’s own comments fit inside that longer argument. He told Fox News Digital that people who protest by desecrating the flag are protected by the freedoms the flag represents. His position is not that dissent should vanish, but that the flag should still be honored as the thing that allows dissent to exist.
A public artwork built for reaction
Large-scale patriotic art has a way of flattening nuance. A huge flag painting is easy to photograph, easy to cheer and easy to criticize. That is part of its power.
For supporters, LoBaido’s project may read as a needed act of national pride at a time when many Americans feel civic symbols have been dragged into partisan combat. For critics, the insistence that the work is apolitical may be hard to accept precisely because the artist is so publicly identified with one political camp.
Both reactions can be true at once. A work can be sincerely patriotic and politically charged. A flag can be intended for everybody and still be received differently by different groups of Americans.
That is the unresolved question LoBaido’s painting raises: can a symbol be reclaimed as shared if the person doing the reclaiming is already seen as partisan?
The takeaway beyond the canvas
The most interesting part of LoBaido’s project is not whether the 9-by-17-foot canvas ends up breaking a record. It is whether his message can survive the political identity attached to him.
He is asking viewers to separate the American flag from party branding, even as he remains a pro-Trump public figure working in a highly visible, patriotic setting. That tension is exactly why the painting is getting attention.
At minimum, the project shows how difficult it has become to display a national symbol without inviting a political reading. The American flag may still be instantly recognizable, but agreement over what it means is much harder to come by.
LoBaido’s giant Old Glory is meant to be a unifying image. The reaction to it will say a lot about whether Americans still believe that is possible.
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