JustArts Gallery
Tulsa, OK
Elevating the creative voices of people confined to carceral institutions across the US.
MessageCollection: Thomas Butler
I'm Thomas Butler, an incarcerated artist, author, and what I call a growth facilitator (Certified Peer Support). For the first thirty five years of my life, I was a lost little boy with no sense of purpose, value, or identity. My blindness and hunger for acceptance and validation led me to the streets, where criminal activity became the means by which I illegitimately sought what I was missing. By age 25, I'd been stabbed, shot three times, and sentenced to life without parole under three strikes for robbery.
Eight years ago, however, God transformed my heart, identity and mindset. I stopped perpetuating a destructive lifestyle and started living with purpose, discipline, and integrity. Prison ceased being a place of punishment for me, and became a place of preparation.
I now live my life and do my time with purpose, surpassing expectations and limitations by creating and facilitating self-improvement programs, creating inspirational artwork and music, and publishing the mindset manual, Why You're Not Winning...Yet, a book I hope will help others - inside and outside - identify unhealthy and counterproductive thinking habits and replace them with positive, winning growth.
My God given mission is to encourage and inspire hope, purpose, resilience, and success in people who are where I once was - on the hamster wheel of life trying to find a reason to keep going.
I created the book and artwork with the primary objective of adding value to those who read and view them.
About my art:
In America today, there's no shortage of words, images, and artistic expressions emerging from inside prison walls that express the oppressive, dehumanizing, and often brutal realities of incarceration. These works speak powerful truths. They document suffering, isolation, and systemic injustice, and they deserve to be seen and heard. I don't dispute those realities, nor do I diminish the importance of bearing witness to them. However, I've come to believe that when despair becomes the dominant narrative, it can unintentionally reinforce a sense of hopelessness among those still living inside those conditions. When every message says the system is crushing and success is impossible, personal growth can begin to feel pointless - like planting seeds in concrete.
The message of my art is different, not because the suffering isn't real, but because hopelessness doesn't have to be the final word. Through lived experience and observation of others, I know it's possible to change, evolve, and even flourish in prison - regardless of the limitations, deprivations, and contradictions that define this environment. Growth may be harder behind bars, but it's not impossible, and, in many ways, it's more radical.
The intent of this series isn't to deny suffering or pretend prison is something that it's not. Instead, it's about challenging the belief that the environment gets to define the limits of what we can do and who we can become. My work asserts that while prison may control bodies, routines, and movement, it doesn't have to control imagination, discipline, vision, or purpose. It says that freedom can begin internally - long before any external release date. It says that growth isn't only a response to comfort, but also is often a rebellion against confinement.
You'll notice the acronym G.R.O.W.T.H. on most of my work. That's because self-improvement is my mindset and my lifestyle, and G.R.O.W.T.H. (Getting Rid of Worthless Thinking Habits) is what I believe to be the most effective mindset one can possess in regard to personal development. So I'm using my art to promote it.
Ultimately, my artwork is a declaration: it is possible to outgrow your environment. It is possible to exceed imposed limitations. And it is possible, even inside prison, to defy expectations and become more than the walls were ever meant to contain.
