Leroy X. Edney

by Grace Bak

“I am a Prisoner without a real voice. A man who has a lot to say, but with limited resources. I begin to put on paper what I couldn’t say to the world.The images that came from me turned out to be everything I love in life, and all those things that stir controversy. My art is an extension of myself, that part of me that hangs in homes and businesses speaking on my behalf and the behalf of countless of others that have been silenced.”

The colors are intensely vibrant and alive, filling the space and holding the viewer ’s eye, as the artist himself states.Many of the paintings’ themes express unity, togetherness, harmony and protection.

As an incarcerated artist those values are important. Leroy X Edney is currently a prisoner, and have been for twenty-five straight years, for robberies committed in his youth. “Youth doesn’t justify my early antics, but it is important to me to let the readers know that I haven’t committed a crime as a mature adult,” the artist states.

Edney is a self-taught artist; he always had sketched and was interested in fashion designing, but he really started to take art-making seriously in the last five years, says Biff Morris, Edney’s cousin and friend, who also serves as his business manager.“Art is the only place I find freedom. Being incarcerated all these years,freedom on any level is very important to me.From Prison I communicate with the outside world,” states Edney, and Morris is doing what he can do to get his art out to the world.