Incarcerated Painter Dazzles Prison Creative Arts Program

DUDERSTADT - Renowned abstract expressionist painter and convicted tax evader Rabo Karabekian floored the audience of the 13th Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan’s prisoners with his pictorial treatises on freedom and aesthetics, sources in PCAP are reporting.

Karabekian, a white Armenian who attended Cranbrook’s Academy of Art and grew up in Birmingham’s Red Light District, is serving 5-7 years for embezzling his ex-wife’s multimillion dollar trust fund.

“My paintings speak about the prison experience and the dark corners of the criminal mind,” Karabekian said during his presentation, surrounded onstage by a display of his works. “Each painting, unlike each prisoner, has its own story to tell.”

Karabekian’s paintings often feature long, uninterrupted vertical lines of bright color laid thickly upon an all-white canvas.

One, titled “Cell Block 8”, controversially marries the color red with the color burnt orange to create a sense of unease and bewilderment, both of which Karabekian says he experienced during multiple appeals and plea bargains.

“I was mistreated by The System, but I’ve come to terms with it in these works,” says Karabekian. “Every man is his own worst prosecutor. Unless you’re a Latino. It’s impossible to be worse than a Latino prosecutor.”

Karabekian’s works became the sole focus of the prisoner exhibition for their eye-catching brilliance, taking home multiple awards and selling out at auction, even while many of the other prisoners’ more visceral works went unbid upon.

“There’s really no reason to regard any other prisoner’s work after one has gazed upon a Karabekian,” Frank Kouklas, an art critic for the Ann Arbor News, said of Karabekian’s works. “Frankly, I think the man’s sentence should be commuted.”

Even Karabekian’s fellow prisoners had a kind word to say about the abstract expressionist’s prowess.

“I thought my use of dark, violent imagery and the theme of phallic domination spoke more about the horrors of prison life,” said Avery O’Neal, a black man serving multiple sentences for the murder of his girlfriend and her 92-year old grandmother.

“But that cracker can really paint,” O’Neal added.

However, some of PCAP’s members felt that Karabekian’s entry into the exhibition unfairly discriminated against the other prisoners, many of whom lacked Karabekian’s formal training.

“A lot of these guys are putting paintbrush to canvas for the first time,” Buzz Alexander, founder of PCAP, said. “We didn’t anticipate the possibility that an actual artist would contribute to the event.”

“But,” Alexander added, “that cracker can really paint.”

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