Anwar Sadat once said that if you see a good person with admirable qualities, try to adapt those qualities to yourself, and he was such a great man. |
I first decided I wanted to be an artist when I was 7 or 8. I won a citywide contest and then later I won the high school division of the South Plains Fair at Lubbock Coronado. |
I've been a professional artist for more than 20 years. What I saw in Calvin is he's already got the ability. I wanted to expose him to a lot of different techniques. |
I've lived with God every day for a long time. When I got busted in 1987 I turned myself in because I knew I'd messed up. What I did was so shocking to me. I hurt people, stole from them. For about three weeks I just lost myself, my morality, values. I didn't care about anything or anybody in the world. I knew it couldn't go on. For several years after that I read books to try to find out what happened to me, and I finally decided I got bitter, I was addicted to heroin. I was in a bad marriage where drugs were involved and I got to a point where I didn't care about myself because I had such a horrible life. |
In the time I've been locked up here, I've met a lot of other people who are locked up and who may have committed crimes to be put here, but are not criminals anymore, they're really fine people and they're productive and an asset that society vastly under uses. |
Just let me paint for you. |