About Oscar López the Artist

Oscar Artist Statement

When I decided to start painting I wasn’t thinking of art as much as I was thinking of the effects sensory deprivation would have on me after a prolonged stay at USP Marion. I realized I needed to use colors in order to effects of being locked down in a 6’ by 9’ cell, 23 hours per day, without access to fresh air, natural light and the colors found in nature. Only once a week was I allowed to go to the yard for a period of 2 hours, and see a bit of nature’s wonders.

In the summer of 1990, after I realized the jailers had no intention of transferring me out of Marion, I talked with a prisoner who had previously offered to teach me how to paint. He responded very positively to my request, and helped me make out the order to purchase the basic materials I needed to start painting. The very first day I was given the materials and after the prisoner had given the first lesson, the jailers transferred him to another unit. The move was a surprise to us both.

I had the painting material, but didn’t know what to do with it. I took it as a challenge and started practicing on a daily basis, reading all the art material I could get my hands on and watching any how-to-paint program offered on TV.

Eleven months after I had started this routine, the jailers declared the use of paints to be contraband and I was forced to send the materials I had home. From that moment on, we could only use coloring pencils and pastels. I began to use pastels, and for the next eight years it was the only medium I used.

In 1998, I was transferred to USP Terre Haute. I was excited thinking I was going to be able to experiment with oil paints, and that I was going to be allowed to paint without any hassles. But when I tried to buy oil paints, I was told I couldn’t have access to any medium needed for oil painting. Later on I found out that at least six prisoners were being allowed to paint with oils.

I started painting with acrylics. The only place I could paint was in the cell – a 6’ by 9’ space I had to share with another prisoner. No sooner had I started painting that the harassment by some jailers began. During the six years I’ve been here, I’m the only prisoner whose painting materials have been confiscated twice. The last time the paints were placed in an unheated area and when they were given back to me mostly all had been damaged. So besides experiencing the harassment and not being able to paint for months, I also had to deal with the extra expense. Paints aren’t very cheap.

During the fourteen years I’ve been painting I’ve learned to appreciate and respect art. During the years I spent in Marion and ADX, painting helped me to relax and transcend the hostile and dehumanizing environment of the walls and the razor wire. It also helped me to look at the world differently and to pay attention to things I took for granted before. For example, finding a green blade of grass in the winter or spotting butterflies, grasshoppers or a deer in the spring or summer. And for the short moment I could spend watching them, trying to figure out their forms, colors and tones. The challenge was to make those things part of whatever I was painting.

I don’t consider myself an artist. The only art class I’ve taken was in high school. The art teacher required the students’ paint with watercolors. But I didn’t have the money to buy the paints. I did the work with charcoal and some of the students liked what I did. But the teacher wasn’t satisfied, and suggested I not take the class the next semester. At the moment I thought art was something only people who could afford it did. It was like tennis – a game that only the privileged played. Prison has taught me different. Unfortunately, when I was 14 years old I didn’t have the experience I had when I came to prison.