Artist Statement

The Road to Freedom

Anthonie Fairbrother 

My artwork is mostly gray with a splash of orange and a road drawing as a background. I used a digital application called Canva to create it. I also wrote a poem on it. I chose to make this because my family never had the chance to be together. 

I researched information about people who had been wrongly convicted of crimes. People who get wrongly imprisoned don’t have the chance to be with their family, and that's not their choice or fault. My goal for this artwork is to make people notice the pain that these people go through and the time that they lose because of a profile that they fit. One of the lines in my poem is “I know I'm free but for some reason, you disagree.” That profile automatically makes these people guilty. People go through time without their family, and if they are lucky they get paid for the time they missed with their family, but they cannot can't fix all the missed time. Nothing can fix that because no matter how hard you try, you can never get that time back. 

It's estimated that 4 to 6 percent of people in prison are innocent. If 5 percent of people are innocent in prison that means 1/20 cases result in a wrongful conviction. That is really unjust!

I hope that my art will change the way people look at wrongfully incarcerated people. I hope it changes the way people look at others who were convicted for something they did do because when anyone comes out of prison it’s much harder to get a job, an apartment, or basic human necessities. People look at formerly incarcerated people like they're a bad person because they screwed up even though most of us have screwed up at times too.