Prison Buddy (Merle), 2020

Prison Buddy (Merle), 2020 Mark Loughney Oil pastel and colored pencil on bristol, white frame with plexi-glass Size: 9”w x 12”h Mark Loughney: “I began this series when the Covid lockdown was beginning to be lifted in the state prisons. The first one I made was a self-portrait. My cellie saw it and said, “Hey do one of me!” Then other friends saw them and the same request followed, so I made a series of them. They use childlike imagery to illustrate one of the most salient paradoxes that exists in the carceral system: men and women are forced into a childlike dependence upon the state for every aspect of their lives, yet are expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to fix themselves while being denied any means to actually do so. It is a state of absurdity that I’ve illustrated with the Prison Buddies.”