Sponsored by
'Death Row' artist
IN THE name of art, one Partridge Green woman spent an emotional ten days visiting people on Death Row.
Now back in England, artist Claire Phillips, 43, is starting on the difficult job of portraying what she saw.
Mrs Phillips met 13 people on her trip to America who had some connection with the infamous Death Row.
They included a daughter and grandson of a condemned woman, a brother of a British man executed, and a number of men who were cleared.
During her trip she also met a legislator, jury member, and an executioner who subsequently now feels the wrong decision was made in a number of cases.
The trip took her through seven states from Florida to Oklahoma where she visited a number of maximum security prisons where methods used to kill the convicts range from the electric chair to lethal injection.
Mother of three teenage daughters, Mrs Phillips only graduated from Northbrook College, Worthing, in 2004 after her five year part-time art course.
Since then she has been painting and exhibiting her work.
She said of her decision to go on the trip: "I am an artist – I have always been interested in painting people who have something to say."
Mrs Phillips was funded by a 5,000 grant from the Arts Council.
But it is thanks to the British charity Reprieve, which provides representation for people on Death Row and is run by the civil rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, that she got involved with the project.
On her trip Mrs Phillips was not only shocked at the conditions of the prisons but also the injustices visible in the system.
"It was quite harrowing. The (legal) representation was not what we would have hoped to get if your life was on the line."
Painting on huge canvases, Mrs Phillips hopes to exhibit her work on Death Row at a variety of venues in 2009.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Horsham
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 25 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: East
