Background to my paintings
Jawad Botmeh

I arrived in prison looking at a 20 year sentence after I was wrongly convicted.  Every prisoner had to be in some kind of employment and therefore I had to choose a job. As a political prisoner I explained that I would not work for the prison establishment.  So, as a compromise, I ended up helping to produce the prisoners’ magazine in the art and design workshop.  Shortly after I joined the governor banned the magazine, due to a single article he felt was criticising the prison management, and I found myself with even less employment opportunities.   I continued to use the prison computers for designing my own cards and developing my computer art skills, as well as practicing with traditional water colours.  There were others who were painting in oils and soon the art and design workshop became a dedicated facility and part of the education department.

 At first I was exploring colours and general subjects that didn’t mean much to me.  I wanted to learn to paint seriously. So I started by copying other artists’ work.  Then I began to paint subjects that reflected feelings, thoughts and issues close to my heart.  I painted some images showing the Israeli military occupation.

With the onset of the second intifada and the proliferation of images of oppression, death and injustice, I was extremely traumatised and isolated.  I couldn’t talk to anyone about how I felt inside the prison, inmates didn’t understand and there was nobody else to discuss things with.

I felt much better after I painted one scene that was to do with the conflict. I was somehow in a silent conversation with myself. I spent a few hours silently in dialogue with the canvas and the colour and felt much better.  Painting became the vehicle to vent my frustrations about the Palestinian situation, injustice in general and my circumstances in particular.

When I began painting I was expressing my feelings on canvas without inhibition or constraint.   This freedom meant I expressed feelings of love, transformation, development and personal contradictions/conflicts.  I fell in love with a special person and this had a great effect on my feelings, outlook and painting.  This was reflected in the themes of my work, causing me to blend wider political and social contradictions with a new emotional pastiche. I further moved towards more abstract expressions in my paintings and found it more satisfying as they allowed me the time to negotiate, at leisure with the paint the meanings of a particular situation.

I’ve enjoyed playing with and experimenting with paint, as helped create a special third space between prison and the outside world.  It has also given me a lot of fun working, especially on the larger canvasses ( prison bed sheets).   In my new prison there is far less opportunity to paint on anything other than a very rudimentary level.