You turn to art in jail?
Anne Scullion from Prison Arts Foundation got me to do some painting when I had been in jail before. I was in the Loyalist wing and it was segregated and she worked with both Republican and Loyalist prisoners.
After I got out, I forgot all about the art and one day when I was visiting someone in jail I saw my paintings up on the walls. They had my signature on them, so I could prove to my mate, who thought I was joking, that they were actually mine.
Once you got out, you returned to working with Paramilitaries?
Yes. I got deeper and deeper involved with that side of things, and at one point I fell out with the organisation and they tried to put me out of the country twice, and there were death threats. I was fighting with the mainstream organisation and luckily for me I ended up in jail because otherwise I would have been dead; that is how out of control my life was.
Now, in jail I was on a 23 hour lock down and one day there was a picture of a girl in my cell, typical prison thing, and I just started drawing and I haven’t stopped since then.
Is that the start of you working to change your life?
Yes. I wanted to educate myself, so I started off doing a computer course. I started drawing in Maghaberry as a hobby, but then I was moved from Maghaberry to Magilligan prison and I met Alison Wilson who was my main art teacher there.
I also met Bobby Mathieson, who used to come in one day a week, and he had served three life sentences during “The Troubles” and he was the first person who really got through to me because he had lived that life. With other people it was hard to listen to them because you always thought they really didn’t know what my life was like, but Bobby knew so he could get through to me.
Alison Wilson changed my life in a massive way, through art because we did a Holocaust project, 14 of us, and only one has reoffended. That is pretty incredible.
Then I had a spiritual encounter off my head on acid. God came into my life and changed my whole outlook on life in a massive way. Which am so grateful for.
So are you drawing, or painting, or both?
I started off drawing, then Alison brought my painting side on. I would always draw, but I had no faith in my own work, but Alison did. She was dying with cancer and she used to say things like she would come back and haunt me if I didn’t keep up my painting.
I also met Pamela Brown from Prison Arts Foundation, and I was a terrible writer because I was a terrible dyslexic, and she facilitated a poetry project and she wanted me to write something. I wasn’t going to do that but I illustrated the book that came from the project, and we actually won an award, the Koestler Award, for that book.
As good as she was, she wasn’t able to make me take up writing, but I know she made a huge difference in people’s lives just as Alison Wilson made a huge difference in my life.
