I grew up with artwork hanging on the walls of my house, but I never paid much attention to it. The images just didn’t speak to me. 

It wasn’t until I took a high school photography class that art grabbed my attention. In that class, I stumbled into a world of f-stops, exposure time, flashes and lighting tricks, matte paper versus glossy paper, black and white or color prints, slow film instead of fast. I stopped seeing life in real time and started seeing it frame by frame. I no longer looked at the full picture; I tilted every scene slightly off center and cropped it for the best effect. I even learned the direction our eyes travel when we take in a new image. 

I fell in love with photography. 

In a darkroom you’re bathed in red light and the air reeks of chemicals for developing film into prints. There are no windows because outside light could ruin your negatives or damage your prints. It was a magical place, where I could work for hours. I loved the quiet of my solitary work, the slow drip of the wet prints drying on a line, the mechanical clicks of shutters opening and closing, images floating to the surface in a developing bath, creating new images by overlapping pieces from different negatives.

My love of photography led me to an apprenticeship in graphic design and spurred me to pursue a fine arts degree in college. But, as a freshman, I had to take all the basic art classes, which kept me out of darkrooms. I took a drawing class and hated it. Instead of being able to reproduce the exact image I saw in a millisecond with a camera, it took me hours to paint or draw the same image. For my self-portrait assignment, I didn’t even bother looking in the mirror.

But photography, as an art form, isn’t available in federal prison. You can buy photo tickets at the commissary and have an incarcerated photographer take your picture. Then you end up with prints to send home to your family. If you’re truly fortunate, you might end up working as the photographer who takes those pictures. I was one of the fortunate ones and took photos for several years. But even then, I had to accept I would never get back in a darkroom with that red-tinged silence or the acrid smell of the chemicals. I only held a gossamer thread to the art form I loved; I was just taking pictures. Nothing more.

With the photography I loved no longer available, I turned to painting. A person I knew who had attended art school began teaching me the basics of painting, brushes, blending and composition. She also warned me that I would need better drawing skills for painting. I grudgingly gave in and signed up for her drawing class. 

At first, I didn’t expect much. When she handed me a charcoal pencil I almost quit the class. The charcoal sticks I had used in college left dust everywhere — my fingers, my clothes, my skin, my nostrils, my desk and other parts of the page. But I quickly realized using a charcoal pencil was different. It had a casing that kept me clean. I took the pencil, determined to learn this skill. My mind was resolute: No quitting allowed.

I dragged the pencil down the page. I saw a bold, black line. Well, duh. Charcoal is black, so what else would the line be? With the graphite I’d used before, though, I had never gotten a true black, only a dark gray. There were no real shadows, no real depth, just impressions of shadows and depth. But this charcoal pencil was something else. I fell in love with that first bold, black stroke.

After rejecting drawing in college, here I was, amazed by it. I drew a sunflower in that first class and kept it for more than 20 years so I could go back and look at it. Unfortunately, the sunflower was lost in a prison transfer, but the image is seared into my brain. It reminded me of how I’d transformed myself and found this new opportunity after losing my first love. 

In that class, I spent countless hours drawing random faces I’d torn out of magazines. None of these faces looked anything like the pictures. As a matter of fact, my teacher stopped me from drawing the entire face. “Just concentrate on one feature — one eye, one ear, one hand — until you get it right,” they said. So after months of trying, feedback and revision, my faces gradually resembled the images.

Then the teacher told me to pair the faces with the charcoal. My shadows took on depth and the contrast made the faces feel alive. Who knew it would have that effect? Who knew it could be so moving? Where was my camera now? Who cared?

I expanded my abilities to include pastel chalk because they made those in pencil form, too. I could sharpen the pencils — charcoal or pastel — to little points so that I could draw faces precisely, down to the last mole or freckle. I could include the specks in a pupil or mirror the highlights on someone’s lips.

Now, if I go too long without drawing, I get itchy fingers. If too much time passes without putting a new image on paper, I start to doodle on documents. I don’t even miss taking pictures now.

Who cares about capturing an image precisely when I can take the same image and change the appearance to give it new meaning? After two decades of honing my drawing skills, I can replicate almost anything I see. But now, instead of mirror images, I create new ones. 

I’m proud to call this my art.

Sending artwork to friends and family is one of my favorite things to do. Some people, after they’ve left prison and gone home, even reach out to request new art from me. I love the idea of sending art out into the world, where someone hangs my work in their home.