Auckland artist Bryan G. Slight served nine-and-a-half years for drug offences. He was released early last year and several months later in August, held his first solo art exhibition at Auckland’s Te Karanga Gallery.
Called Te Hokinga Mai: The Home Coming, the exhibition featured 65 artworks chronicling Bryan’s time in prison. In October the Toi Ora Live Art Trust exhibition at Depot Artspace in Devonport featured a work by Bryan and another was selected for the 2008 Waitakere Trust Art Awards exhibition.
It’s been a long journey of self-improvement that began early in Bryan’s prison term when a friend sent him good quality paints, brushes and paper to use once he achieved minimum security status.
Staff and management supported his request for education and self-development classes which included establishing art classes and working with a librarian to launch a book club.
The book club and weekly art classes steadily grew in popularity and continue to thrive even though most of the original participants have been released.
“I was already motivated to change but the art classes and book club opened up positive opportunities for me,” 52-year-old Bryan says. “I learned that the only way to change a bad habit is to replace it with a good one.
“Now that I’m free, I’ve been putting the skills and self-discipline I picked up as a prisoner to good use.”
Bryan says preparing work for the exhibition was a steep learning curve. He had few resources and very little knowledge about how it’s done so was very grateful for the support of Toi Ora Live Art Trust, its director Erwin Van Asbeck, and staff at Te Karanga Gallery and Depot Artspace.
“I wept the day Erwin and I hung the paintings in the gallery,” Bryan recalls. “I had never seen the works together like that and it was overwhelming – a dream come true.”
As well as painting Bryan works with mosaics, digital art, traditional carving and fabric printing. He’s starting to receive commissions for his work and says he’s so busy he hardly has time to cook dinner.
Bryan is focused and determined to make a living from his art. Through his art he’s developed a strong social conscience and an equally strong desire to pick up the positive threads of his life. That includes being reunited with his three children, who he hasn’t seen for ten years, and his first grandchild.
“I miss them terribly but I’m in close communication with them and send them a lot of my paintings, ” Bryan says.
In the meantime he attends Toi Ora Live Art Trust a couple of times a week, and he’s a volunteer for Psychiatric Survivors and the Framework Trust.
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