The artist Kenneth West once read that Jean-Michel Basquiat created 6,000 pieces of art, all before he died at age 27.
“That’s amazing,” said West, 45, a painter and sculptor who works out of the W.F. Ramsey Unit in Rosharon, Texas. “I too would like to create a large body of work like that.”
And so, in a craft shop at his prison, West puts in the work. He told PJP that he makes between 120 and 150 artworks a year, which reflect a staggering range of styles.
As a painter, his semi-realistic portraits of men and women combine elements of cubism and the neo-Expressionist style of Basquiat.
Some of his work is explicitly political, as in “Make America Great Again,” a painting in which a blooming spectrum of light brown to black tones eclipses a Confederate flag.
“It’s about the browning of America,” West said, “and how racists see this as a threat.”
Meanwhile, West’s geometric sculptures are both abstract and modern, and often deal in metaphor and allegory. They are also inflected with themes of incarceration, African symbology and contemporary pop culture.
PJP spoke to West, who grew up in Houston and has been incarcerated for 27 years, over the e-messaging platform Securus. The questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.
— PJP Editors
Kenneth West, artist
Q: Where do you most often work in the prison?
Kenneth: I make my art in the craft shop, a large room here at the prison where myself and a hundred others are allowed to make different crafts. It takes three to five years to be admitted. During the wait, you have to maintain a certain amount of money in your inmate trust fund account, and remain free of any disciplinary offenses.
Once admitted we are given a small table with shelves underneath for storage as well as access to electricity. They ask us to choose our preferred craft ahead of time — either woodwork, art, leather goods or jewelry making. We have to purchase all of our materials and tools.
It’s a very lively space. There is a constant whirl of saws, sanders, grinders, sprayers and compressors cutting on and off.
Q: You work in various mediums, but seem most drawn to painting and sculpture. How come? And what kind of materials do you use? Are they hard to come by inside?
Kenneth: They are the most permanent. Like life, prison is in a constant state of transition. When I make a painting or sculpture, I’m creating something that not only transcends my physical environment and limitations, but has the potential to exist a hundred years from now. Think about the work of [Albrecht] Dürer, Leonardo [da Vinci], or [Édouard] Manet: These men lived hundreds of years ago, yet we are still enjoying their work today. That fascinates me.
Materials-wise, my biggest constraint is financial. Here in Texas, inmates don’t get paid and have to rely on friends and family for all our needs, including commissary purchases, phone calls and so forth. The same is true for art supplies. We can order from any approved vendor, but I’m usually limited to what materials I can afford. For me that’s canvas, paint and wood.
Q: Prisons are brutal places, but they are also storehouses of incredible ingenuity and creativity. In your time inside, have you encountered other artists (or creatives of any kind), who have inspired you?
Kenneth: Prison life is horrible by design, but some people find ways to make sweet tea from dirty dishwater. It’s true that adversity has a way of forcing people to dig deep and mine the treasures that we all have inside — which often go uncultivated when we in free society get caught up trying to make a living.
Over the years I’ve run into a few guys in the prison system who have inspired me. Two men who were big influences on me were guys named Drew and Bad Apple.
Drew had very little outside support and literally used his art to provide for himself economically. He would sit at a table in the common area making cards and painting pictures of guys’ wives, girlfriends, grandkids and pen pals, and would make $60 to $100 a week doing so. That’s nothing in society, but a good income in prison.
The work and his talent brought him a sense of accomplishment. I found that very inspirational.
Another friend and fellow artist in here that inspired and continues to do so is Bad Apple. He was in the craft shop [with me] and became a professional airbrush artist. He was recently released after 32 years and is now earning a living painting murals and signs for local businesses.
Q: What are you working on now? What’s next?
Kenneth: One piece I’m working on is a 5-foot-by-3-foot sculpture-painting of a pregnant Madonna-like figure. It’s made of wood, with long wood braids attached to her head to signify that this is a Black woman.
Most African Americans of a certain age grew up in homes where their parents or grandparents had religious pictures on their walls. My grandparents had pictures of a white Jesus and a scene from “The Last Supper” on their wall. Of course, all of Jesus’ disciples were white.
In this work I’m trying to ask — what’s the politics of that? What are the effects when these images hang in Black households? It wasn’t until I got older and became better read that I understood that [the whiteness in Christianity] was another myth, an invention of white supremacy ideology.
The word “black” has many negative connotations: soiled, dirty, lacking light, gloomy, sullen. Meanwhile, “gold” or “golden” evokes blond, lustrous, superb, marked by success, wealth and so on. [By sculpting a recognizably Black woman and painting the piece gold], I’m also contesting the very definition of what Black is.
Q: Do you have any advice for other artists inside who are trying to build a creative practice?
Kenneth: While your words can be suspect, your actions can never be denied. When you hear a song you like, you like it regardless of where it was made or who made it. That’s how it is for us if we keep producing high quality work. While there will always be those who won’t give us a chance because of our past, or where we are, talent is talent. It speaks for itself.
We got to keep grinding, pushing and believing in ourselves until others do. And if they fail to, well that’s their loss. Someone once said that it’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. That’s what we do when we create: light candles in the darkness.