American portrait painter, Kehinde Wiley, has asked United States President, Donald Trump, to allow him buy his own painting which government officials removed from the American Embassy in the Dominican Republic.

Mr Wiley said he made the request last week in a mail addressed to Mr Trump; the head of the State Department’s Art in Embassies program; Leah Campos; the current ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Erin Scavino; and the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

“If your administration has determined that it no longer wishes to display the work, I would like to ask for the opportunity to purchase it back,” Mr Wiley requested in the letter.

Mrs Campos and Mrs Scavino were alleged to have conspired to sell off Mr Wiley’s painting which greeted visitors as one of the first things they saw entering the embassy.

Mrs Scavino, was heard on a podcast admitting to being personally responsible for removing the painting she described “aesthetically terrifying,” while Mrs Campos, in an old interview, described the artwork, in Spanish, as depicting a large painting of a picnic in a park with flowers and lesbians.

Reacting to the perception of the painting by the government officials, Mr Wiley, in an interview with The New York Times on Monday, expressed deep sadness about the development, saying “If the administration is not particularly interested in the work, bring it home. Let me have it. It was a really successful painting, and it is a shame it was so little understood.”

Mr Wiley also reacted to the linking of his painting with lesbian picnic, saying, “I wasn’t quite sure how they got there. What I have in the painting depicted are four young people coming together within a field of flowers.” 

Asked if the negative sentiments about his painting was due to homophobia, he said, “Was it homophobic? It’s possible. To look at the painting and draw those conclusions presupposes a lot. It says a lot about panic and fear, and about creating a specific type of narrative surrounding queer people and people of colour.”

Mr Wiley notable for painting the official presidential portrait of former president, Barack Obama, added, “I just happen to be the guy who painted Obama. That is the elephant in the living room.

 “Out of all the artists in the world and the millions of paintings that could have been chosen at this point, why me? Why this moment? Why this painting?”

Mr Trump, the White House, and the State Department, had yet to responded to Mr Wiley’s request. 

Mr Wiley’s controversial painting, ‘Young Artists After Siamesas 1960,’ was inaugurated in 2013 through the State Department’s Art in Embassies program.

According to him, he spent two years studying the work of Dominican painters before making the composition, and eventually asking four local art students to pose against a backdrop of flowers for the final piece.