Welmon Sharlhorne
b. 1952, Houma, Louisiana
Lives in New Orleans
venue
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
925 Camp Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Monday–Sunday, 10 AM–5 PM
neighborhood
Downtown/Central Business District (CBD)
About the project
Welmon Sharlhorne’s drawings use a limited number of materials and precise vocabulary of forms to evoke an array of familiar and imagined structures. Sharlhorne’s works are defined by a signature style that bears a relationship to calligraphy and uses spare linework and patterning to create open compositions. He revisits recurrent subjects including animals, fantastic beasts, vehicles, and architecture, especially churches. The geometry of his works lends them a consistent rhythm that mirrors the constant and incremental passage of time. His drawings often feature clock faces at their center, as well as imagery that speaks to life, death, law, order, and salvation.
The works selected also relate to his biography––his time spent in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola and living in New Orleans––as well as imagined spaces beyond this world that his drawings invite us into. Sharlhorne began drawing using an assortment of common tools—ballpoint pens, bottle caps, washers, bowls, as well as manila envelopes, the only large paper he could regularly access while incarcerated, through contact with his lawyers. Though his tools reflect conditions of constraint, his transformations speak to his technical skills and the transcendent abilities of dedication to a craft.
about the artist
Welmon Sharlhorne is a self-taught artist who learned his craft while wrongfully imprisoned in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (“Angola”) for more than twenty years. While in prison, Sharlhorne began to make art. He created ink drawings using an assortment of “prison tools” such as bottle caps, washers, and bowls to create circles and curves, and tongue depressors to create straight lines. The only paper allowed to him was manila envelopes, which were provided for contact with his lawyers. His meticulous pen and ink drawings of imaginary structures, people, buses, birds, and night skyscapes employ geometry and pattern, and evoke a sense of spiraling time, likely reflective of his seemingly interminable incarceration.
Sharlhorne sold his works to other inmates, who sent them to family members and others outside of Angola. They eventually made their way into broader circulation and gained critical and market attention. Sharlhorne’s work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland; and the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
Welmon Sharlhorne, 2021. Installation view: Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021–22. Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photo: Jonathan Traviesa