Art the hard way: The role of art in liberation and the transforming power of creation

This week I am opening my page up to an outburst of artfulness supplied by Brian Maguire, Sahaja Budzilla, Perry Wharrie, Paddy Maguire, Tam Carrigan, Louie Simpson, Danny Jones, Ax, Contra and Eddie Cahill. Ten artists who came by their art the hard way. An exhibition that breaks out of the usual mould. 

Banged up in my teenage years, a new reader, buckling down to not running away again from a Young Offenders’ Institute, I discovered art – 62 years ago I swapped having no future other than wrongdoing to a future full of being creative. 

What a blast of common sense that was, not just for me but the screws and the custodial system who recognised that a painting, drawing boy was better than some arsehole planning his next escape. 

The last escape had ended in a car chase in a stolen Austin-Healey Sprite and a smash up at 87 miles an hour. A near-death experience and a night in Barking Creek nick ended the breakout that lasted 12 hours. 

But now I was drawing and painting and feeling useful and full of personal joy. I could make stuff that brought joy also to other people. It was as if I grew up and the place of punishment I had been sent to grew up at the same time. Therefore it was good to encourage offenders towards art and creativity and away from a kind of self-harming criminality. 

The foundation stones were laid, and though I never became Britain’s new Francis Bacon or David Hockney I kept art uppermost in my life. I was civilised by it and became the useful person I hope I have become through it. 

Come forward many decades when a family friend who himself has done more than his fair share of porridge alerts me to a group of painters, all who have done serious ‘bird’, who are having an exhibition. Given the chance to paint and draw and make stuff while inside, the artists are now continuing their passions.  

The Rogues Gallery is a pop-up gallery in East London’s Spitalfields, set up by the old lags to show their latest work. It runs for the whole of this week at 82 Commercial Street and is definitely worth dropping in. These reformed ‘rogues’ are selling their work and making their way in the profession of being artists. 

Art to me, and to the Rogues Gallery ensemble, is the great liberator. I enclose examples here of those that have through art turned their lives around. It’s a stunning show. I hope they do more like it and spread the word of rehabilitation through art. With the poor state of our prison rehabilitation programmes we need more of the transforming power of creation.  

Rogues Gallery runs until 29 September from 12-9pm at 82 Commercial Street. 

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