Q: Your art has emerged from a deeply personal and challenging environment. Can you share how solitary confinement has shaped your creative process and the themes you explore in your work?

A: When I look at the work of Kate Pincus‑Whitney, I feel she thrives on abundance, which is beautiful. I love that energy. But I thrive on scarcity. There’s a lot of emptiness around me, both physically and psychologically, and you can be destroyed by the emptiness of a place or the psyches of the people who populate that place after the emptiness has gotten into them. So you learn to harness it as raw energy or potential.

I’ve sat two decades plus in solitary confinement cells within a single building in a single prison, watching the paint chip and fall from the walls. The emptiness gets into your body after you are exposed to it for so long, and it has to come out some way. Some people lose their sanity for a while as they pass the emptiness like passing waste from the body. Me, I make art. But I wouldn’t say that my art is a symptom of a psychosis; it’s more like a bulwark against it. It is, in part at least, a product of my internal sanity‑maintenance work.

For a very long time I didn’t have access to art supplies—just a number two pencil, pen, cheap colored pencils, and low‑quality watercolors. The barren environment and the sparse supplies early in my practice are reflected in my continual liberal use of collaged material sourced from anywhere I can find it, a lot of it mailed from friends or picked off the floor. A meditation on the value of what someone has deemed trash? Acquiring art supplies via irregular channels thus became a thing and required creative exercise, as well as ensuring safe passage of the work to the keeping of friends outside because what was allowed out was essentially subject to the approval of what amounted to a censorship committee. Things like this taught me that the “art” in the artwork could be in its process, not strictly its product. And I saw the “work” in artwork being realized in the way I saw the potential of an object I sent out into the world to act as my emissary.

Communication with the outside world has been so restricted for me for the past couple of decades. Such a condition is detrimental to your health. Humans need connection with others to exist, to acquire what we need to be healthy. For those of us who are visual, we find we are drawn to a subject by our eyes. When I was a kid, I’d set fires to get the attention of staff to some problem or need I had. It’s pretty much the same process at work now when I send a painting out into the world.

Recently, I’ve noticed that as I’ve grown more serious about my work my palette has shifted from a lot of jumpy colors to something more focused. Some might say muted. For a few weeks this caused a bit of a crisis and perhaps shame for the fact that my work wasn’t as fun as that of those whom I consider my peers in the art world today. I’m painting these barren solitary cell‑scapes—usually in yellow ochre, this or that umber, and perhaps a sienna for a single figure being distorted somehow by their setting. Then I reached a place of acceptance where I was just like, this is what art is for me and this is what moves me. I can’t escape the truth of my life. If I painted anything else I wouldn’t feel strongly about it. I couldn’t paint it. I wouldn’t feel I was being honest, and for me honesty and art are inseparable.

This is because stories are what shape our lives, how we think of ourselves, and determine where you find yourself in life. A story can make or break you and your future. Many stories delivered me to my present life, and I feel so strongly in the power of stories—perhaps more accurate stories—to help move me to a better place in life. When you feel the impact of storytelling as powerfully as I have in my life, you develop a healthy respect for the viewer. You don’t want to give them any bullshit because it’s a matter of life or death, for the artist as well. Artists, actors, and writers all tell stories to pay their bills, which is an existential matter, and this is no different for me. It is all about survival when we get to the nitty‑gritty.

Q: Your work critiques the criminal justice system while also illuminating human dignity. How do you balance these heavy themes with the hope and resilience evident in your art?

A: I keep returning to Kate Pincus‑Whitney because I’ve looked at a lot of her work the past few months and I love her vibe. But when you look at what she shares about her life, you see that her art is her life. It’s the same with me. There’s this balance of heaviness and hope in my art because that’s me. That’s my life and who I am. It’s as real as it gets; it’s not a gimmick.

When you look at my figures you’re looking at someone who is threatened and who doesn’t want to die, someone for whom the belief in overcoming is still alive. I’ve had to do a lot of studying over the decades to make the philosophical case in my own head that I don’t deserve to be killed or to live in a box for my natural life, and that in fact such an idea isn’t built on good reasoning. My art then could also be understood as me making this philosophical argument for my life, and I seem to be able to do this visually.

Going back to the subject of scarcity, I don’t have anything in life, really, but a few friends, a wonderful girlfriend, a few art supplies, and a dream for more in life. When you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense—a guy using art in obscurity to try and survive a legal condemnation of his life? It’s really absurd, but I think hope, genuine hope, is a bit irrational. But genuine hope also often springs from a type of desperation that has its back against the wall. My art is a caged animal trying to claw its way out.

Having art as an action at my disposal (when all other actions aside from resignation and self‑annihilation are barred from me) is a way of doing something with the natural impulse to fight when in danger. But I think that you have to maintain your dignity in life, no matter what. And that then becomes a critique in its own way. For if you maintain your dignity and your opponent loses theirs, you’ve made your point—you’ve already won the philosophical argument. Art is a way of demonstrating dignity. What is more dignifying than art? When we look at the beautiful cave paintings we have a greater respect for the humans who came long before us.

I might lose the battle for my life but the war for my dignity is won and will be affirmed by generations to come. I don’t know how or why I haven’t imploded with despair yet. I’ve known so many people who have, and I’m always trying to understand what makes one person resilient and hopeful while another in a similar situation falters under the weight of reality. It’s probably best that a professional researcher in some field answer that question. But I’m guessing it’s rooted in my childhood where giving up wasn’t an option nor allowed and being a fighter was encouraged.

I come from struggle culture: if we don’t have a way, we make one. And because art is my way, the hope is just there in the same way we grew vegetables in our yard as a kid to feed the family. It was this or nothing. With that kind of life there’s no room for any doubtful considerations getting into the process because you’re single‑mindedly locked in on eating. I’m living in a very basic, existentially raw manner. Resilience isn’t a buzzword; it’s not a trend—it’s just what I do because it’s who I am. It’s how experience has shaped me. Once you witness a few close friends—whole, healthy and under 40 years of age—walk gracefully to their murders, then you’ll understand how I balance all these things.

Q: Buddhist and yogic practices play a role in your creative and personal healing. How have these philosophies influenced your artistic approach and the messages you aim to convey?

A: Prison is such a volatile setting. Nothing is fixed or certain. I’ve only very recently been allowed to order supplies officially, and still there are ever‑shifting limits around what I can have sent in. Add to this the diversity of prison and the fact that the actions of others are understood by the staff as the potential actions of all. This plays out as collective punishment: if someone uses their art supplies, say, in some harmful or disruptive way, their action is used to limit the access of supplies for all.

Because not all are as serious about art as me—or maybe because not all people are as delusional as me to put their faith in paint—it can’t be expected that I’ll have paint to practice my faith tomorrow. So the idea of impermanence, central to Buddhism, is very active in how I relate to paint and the images I evoke in order to express my ideas. I know that at any moment the staff could change their minds about allowing us to have art supplies, and there’s nothing I can do about it. If they want to take everything from me they can—who’s going to stop them?

When I look at my liberal use of paint, the way I often lay it on thick, it’s totally out of sync with the usual way of thinking here where you have to hold on to what you have. I use my stuff before I lose my stuff. In Buddhism we want to make use of our precious lives—while we can—to wake up, to eliminate suffering from our lives and that of others. Clearly my work is a desperate yet dignified cry for justice, so there are the Buddhist teachings on equanimity there in the balancing of these two strong impulses.

In the West, or for dominant trends in the West and, really, globally, justice is merely retribution. It’s about the perpetuation of suffering. My art, in a way, could be read as engaged Buddhism. It is a standing up, a getting in the way between the machine and who it’s set its sights on and marked for death. This is a form of justice that seeks to heal—not hurt.

Impermanence, like the aging process, can be beautiful. I hope that my art stirs a beautiful emotion in others, giving them an appreciation for the law of impermanence that’s built into their bodies and lives. I deploy an intentional weathered and aged look in my work which is inspired by my love of tattered billboards and posters tacked to walls in urban settings. I find this beautiful and hope that viewers can use my art to see the beauty around them, not merely blight or neglect. When I see tattered billboards in my memories or the chipped and flaking paint on my cell walls around me, I’m reminded that this is me: I too am falling apart, and I’d better get on with living my life before it’s over.

Q: You’ve mentioned using found materials in your art. How do the constraints of your environment inform your choice of media and the creative solutions you’ve developed?

A: I want people to look around them and see—actually see—the potential in the things they’ve previously overlooked. I want them to see the value in the things they think don’t matter. Of course my personal life in the legal system has been one where my life, the larger picture of my life, has been reduced to refuse and deemed useless. And perhaps this is why so much refuse and lowly items find their way into my art.

I began experimenting with found material at the same time that I began practicing yoga. As you know, there are many forms of yoga, not merely the physical practices. But even when it comes to physical yoga it is something that begins with the mind. It’s about a limbering of the psyche first. From an acceptance of what is, we move toward the possible; but with a rigid mind this is impossible. We don’t know what is beyond the familiar, which is scary, but if you don’t experiment you don’t know what is possible.

In so many instances while experimenting with found material, I discovered something interesting or insightful which I hadn’t previously mapped out. I think in so many ways we stifle art by approaching it with a fixed idea. I think art exists beyond what we think art is. Art is an idea that is explored and mapped in the material world. But when you don’t have many options for material like me here, yet you have an insatiable urge to create, you start seeing potential where you hadn’t previously.

Solitary confinement and the death penalty are dead, inflexible ideas in that they objectify and define, then distort and deal death to the defined object with an artificial and illogical methodology totally disconnected from reality. It is both random and intentional. Once it selects you it defines you according to what it needs to in order to justify its logic and existence. Any attempt to critique it is met with contortionist rhetoric which only holds up in a type of political solitary where proponents can’t be challenged in genuine conversations with competent opponents.

For a very long time I have sat in a cell and desired the acceptance of my humanity and a legal affirming of its potential. When you’re making art there’s a lot that comes out of the artist unconsciously. In choosing found material as a way of helping me express my inner longing, I’ve also let slip my views on the way the system in which I’m trapped operates: it too uses found material, mostly societal refuse, or what Angela Davis has termed the “detritus of capitalism.”

Q: You’ve spoken about the transformative potential of art, citing Angela Davis’s view that art helps us feel what we don’t fully understand. How do you hope your art sparks empathy or action in your audience?

A: Well, I’m 43 today but was put into a cell when I was 18, condemned to death when I was 19, and gift‑wrapped in chains for the executioner and shipped to death row at an age when kids my age should have been heading off to college. I’m not some unique oddity—that’s not the aim of my art. There are millions of kids today like I was when I was a troubled teen, lost.

I’ve been lucky to still be alive and fortunate to have the support to cultivate a voice that can at times say things that cause others to sit up and listen. But if I am anything via my art, it is a flag representing many lost generations, and not just cis Black males from poor urban neighborhoods, but queer kids, Indigenous people, women, and the entire list of people treated as expendable. Of course I come from a specific background, and my art unabashedly centers melanated people like myself. I’m not trying to paint a pretty picture because what I see on the daily is ugly.

Someone just died here this week, and it will be said that his death was caused by the effects of diabetes; but when we know the health effects of loneliness on people, can we really write this death off as natural? When there’s a clear record of medical neglect within the institutions I live in, can we be sure that his death isn’t part of the natural state of the system in which he lived? So I hope that my art helps to denormalize routine deaths experienced by many Americans.

We just had an election in this country where we heard that all Americans deserve to be safe, but who? And from what? Once, my friend, the author and restorative justice practitioner Leaf Seligman, called my painting No Touch Torture beautiful, and I told her that it’s not. I can’t say that the stuff is horrible. I question if I’m really an artist and if I could create if not for this cell, this death sentence.

Who is creating the work we attribute to Obie Weathers? My friend, the curator Azadeh Shladovsky, asks of my works, “Who is the subject and who the object? Is the solitary figure the subject within the solitary cell, or the object of the subject which is cell?” Although my art is intended to support a particular argument that’s been struggling to be realized in this country for a very, very long time, I understand that it is but a drop in the bucket. Necessary, yes, but still small. Ultimately my hope for my art is that it helps save me. We all just want to wake up tomorrow, right?

Q: As someone navigating profound isolation, what advice would you give to emerging artists about channeling personal challenges into meaningful and impactful art? Is there anything else you might want to share with our readers?

A: There are a lot of challenges faced by an artist in prison who is serious about their work, let alone one held in solitary with a death sentence looming over their life. For me, this morning, it is remembering that while working with oils (as is my primary practice of late) there’s only a slim window of time that I can work by good, natural light. This window happens to be in the latter portion of the afternoon and lasts only a few hours, as there’s but one window in the cell and it faces west. It’s frustrating trying to work by the fluorescent lights fixed in the cell, but there’s nothing else to be done but work with the conditions one has.

I believe this is generally the condition of any artist who is as serious as I believe myself to be. You have to work with the conditions you have, whatever they may be. I’ve seen many people give up a life of art for their inability to surmount an immovable wall between them and what they wanted to do creatively.

 Strangely, it seems, the things we consider limitations (as much as our strengths) become a partner in our art production. In fact, strengths too can often be limits. You have to be willing to allow your limits to be part of your process even if they don’t want to be a part of your game. It is simply a fact of life that we can control but so much—there will be conditions outside our control.

Perhaps all we can control, or what I have learned I can control, is the life and death of my rebellion—which my art is. You have to keep making art and try not to give much of a fuck about who said what about what art is and isn’t. “Should” and “ought not to” is the death of art. Protect your imagination, your unique sense of what’s interesting, worthy, and beautiful. Do this at all costs.