This is an article about drawings made by persons who were in prison. They were featured in an exhibition at the Drawing Center that ran through January 5, 2020. Author Jillian Steinhauer quotes cartoonist Lynda Barry, who sounds the familiar theme that we all draw as children and grow away from it subsequently.

In the opening of her new book, “Making Comics,” the cartoonist and MacArthur fellow Lynda Barry reminds her adult readers that they made art when they were young, even if they self-consciously stopped doing so long ago. “There was a time when drawing and writing were not separated for you,” she writes. “We draw before we are taught.”

(Jillian Steinhauer, “Prison Art: A Dark Place Where the Muse Never Leaves,” NYTimes, 12-12-19)

(c) 2020 JMN