Photo Credit: Rahzizi Ishakarah
Tickets
Members: Free with RSVP
Non-Members: $10
“Time is your most valuable asset,” says Mr. Wash, a self-taught artist who taught himself to draw and paint while wrongfully incarcerated for twenty-one years, resulting in a body of work that remarkably evokes human emotions. Sentenced to life in prison in the late 1990s for nonviolent drug offenses he did not commit, Mr. Wash refined his craft eventually painting portraits of his fellow inmates, often depicting them as free men. In 2016, Mr. Wash was granted clemency by former U.S. President Barack Obama and has since gained traction as an artist having shown both nationally and internationally.
During his two-week residency, Mr. Wash, will continue his painting practice. On March 16th, the artist will speak on his personal history, artistic journey, his first solo-exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in LA (on view February 16th – March 30th), and his experience of the Sag Harbor community.
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Fulton Leroy Washington (known as Mr. Wash) is a self-taught artist with the unique ability to express human emotions in the form of paintings. Wrongfully convicted in 1997 for a non-violent drug offense, he learned and refined his craft while serving a life sentence, the mandatory minimum that had been set during the era of the War on Drugs. On May 5, 2016, he was granted clemency by President Obama and released September 2, 2016. Following his own life experiences and the way in which he saw the broken U.S. criminal justice system impact the lives of so many, Mr. Wash has become a strong advocate of criminal justice reform. He is the recipient of the Hammer Museum 2020 MILA Mohn Award. His work has been exhibited as well at LACMA, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Art Basel Switzerland, Art Basel Miami, HVW8 Gallery. He has his first solo show at the Jeffrey Deitch (Los Angeles) Gallery February 16, 2024.