About Tony's art
Wrongfully convicted of capital murder and sent to Death Row in 1996 Tony Medina says that he has always enjoyed creating things and experimenting with different forms of art. Though it was only after Texas Death Row was moved to the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas in 2000 and Tony was placed in indefinite solitary confinement that his journy to find his voice through art really began.
Creating works of art while trying to resist the pull of depression, sensory deprivation and the dehumanization of being in solitary confinement on Death Row is not a simple thing. While many states and prisons have craft shops and creative art programs that encourage prisoners in their art, Texas Death Row does not. Artists on Texas Death Row have to constantly battle the limitations of prison - namely, the lack of funds, research materials, quality art supplies space and property restrictions, constant interruptions and surveillance by staff and the threat of having their art and what supplies they have managed to gather together confiscated or destroyed. Wanting to separate himself from other artists around him, Tony began making explicitly political art, often combined with a unique two-dimensional style as a way of expressing his frustrations and anger at the broken injustice system he found himself trapped in. In 2010 Tony focused his eye and talents on producing Native American inspired artwork.
Creating works of art while trying to resist the pull of depression, sensory deprivation and the dehumanization of being in solitary confinement on Death Row is not a simple thing. While many states and prisons have craft shops and creative art programs that encourage prisoners in their art, Texas Death Row does not. Artists on Texas Death Row have to constantly battle the limitations of prison - namely, the lack of funds, research materials, quality art supplies space and property restrictions, constant interruptions and surveillance by staff and the threat of having their art and what supplies they have managed to gather together confiscated or destroyed. Wanting to separate himself from other artists around him, Tony began making explicitly political art, often combined with a unique two-dimensional style as a way of expressing his frustrations and anger at the broken injustice system he found himself trapped in. In 2010 Tony focused his eye and talents on producing Native American inspired artwork.
''Because of my family history I have always been drawn to different styles and mediums of Native art, when I saw the symmetry, clean lines and repeated forms used in Pacific North West art, I fell in love with it and knew I had to try my hand at it''
Tony Medina (2022)
Though ''prison art'' rarely makes it into art galleries, in 2016 an art exhibition was held at 'Galerie La Primaire' in Switzerland, which included a selection of Tony's amazing artwork! Have a look at the photo gallery below that showcases some of the art Tony created whilst being incarcerated on Texas Death Row and having acces to only limited resources and materials.
© All artwork of Anthony Shawn Medina 2023
