Black American Fulton Leroy Washington was incarcerated in 1997 for nonviolent drug offences. Yet the War on Drugs (1980s-2000s) government program in force at the time meant that he had to serve a life sentence. While serving time, Washington grew to love painting and began to make photo-realistic portraits of his fellow inmates. He depicts them during their emotionally vulnerable moments in touching portraits. He also portrays them as free men who are able to live full lives.
His paintings have helped humanize convicts—people who often face prejudice from society and are discriminated against within and by the American prison system. With his work, Washington helps people see prisoners as marginalized people needing second chances, reflecting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Reduced Inequalities.
Washington is a self-taught artist who honed his oil and acrylic painting skills while serving a life sentence, managing only to leave the prison system when President Obama granted him clemency in 2016. While serving time, his paintings of fellow inmates helped him navigate a hierarchical prison society. It allowed him to make friends by creating other inmates’ portraits; inmates who eventually would go on to commission paintings from him and even donate funds for his legal expenses.
His moving portraits of fellow inmates were collected under his Teardrop series. As seen from one of the pieces from the series Missing You, the works depict up-close portraits of Washington's fellow convicts in tears. Portraits of their loved ones, their daughters, sisters and mothers appear in their tears, a reflection of the complex emotions and grief that people undergo while incarcerated. Their tears reflect everything from guilt to longing and the unbearable sadness which comes from being forcefully separated from their loved ones.
In portraying convicts and their loved ones, Washington’s paintings humanize the stories of these inmates to viewers of his art, helping form a kinder and more compassionate narrative surrounding incarcerated folks. In an interview with Truth Dig, Washington shared how the general public is often prejudiced against prisoners, jumping immediately to ideas of worst-case scenarios and accusing them of serious crimes like murder instead of waiting to understand what transpired in their individual cases.
Washington also spoke about how the American prison system is especially geared towards exploiting incarcerated Black people and people of colour. “We’re still dealing with slavery in the form of mass incarceration, […] we’re not on a plantation but in a prison,” Washington said in his interview with Truth Dig. A 2023 Pew study found that Black people remain over-represented in American jail populations and admissions while also staying incarcerated for longer periods of time. This goes to show how racial disparities persist within the American prison system and how crucial artworks like those made by Washington are in terms of advocating for Black prisoner’s rights.
In one of Washington’s commissioned paintings, Mondaine’s Market, Washington has depicted one of the many businesses that his fellow inmate, John Mondaine owned before he was incarcerated. Washington recalls how Mondaine slowly lost his businesses while being incarcerated. Hence, the painting would hopefully be able to give Mondaine something to remember and strive for. This piece and other commissioned pieces contrast Washington’s Teardrop series as they focus on convicts' lives outside of themselves and prison. These pieces help to memorialize the inmate’s place in the world—once which they long to return to—for both themselves and viewers of Washington’s art.