On Friday a coworker dropped the front page of the NY Times on my desk and told me to check out the following article, In Prison for Life, He Turns M&M's Into an Art Form (weblogsinc / readon). Drawing comparisons with van Gogh and Pollack, the van Gogh comparison by the gallery owner no less, Donny Johnson's work may draw more of a crowd for his ingenuity in procuring artists supplies than for the actual work.

That's not to say his work is anything to be looked down upon, they are abstract but teeming with emotion according to those that have studied them in person. For me, the draw is in his story, his paint brush is cobbled together using plastic wrap, foil and his own hair, his pigments for the most part comes from M&M's though he's experiemented with Skittles, Kool-Aid, coffee and anything else he can get his hands on from the prison commissary. Read on about one incarcerated man's self administered therapy.

Update: Pelican Bay painter disciplined for running prison business, this is ridiculous, the man isn't getting a cent of the proceeds (goes towards a fund for the family of inmates) and he's getting disciplined.