Jail Pants

At first glance, this painting appears almost domestic. Eljay sits quietly on a couch with my cat, Granddad, resting peacefully in his lap. Eljay is swallowed almost entirely by shadow, while Granddad is illuminated by a single beam of light. The contrast feels symbolic now in ways I didn't fully understand when I painted it.

Eljay represented a turning point in my life.

By the age of seventeen, I was already immersed in the drug world. Nearly every serious relationship I had was with someone involved in the distribution, cultivation, or manufacturing of cannabis and other controlled substances. Over time, it became part of my everyday life. I connected people with my partners, ran errands, and helped out in ways that felt ordinary at the time. I wasn't necessarily making the decisions or running the operation, but being in those relationships meant I was involved in that world in ways that went beyond simply dating someone. I was also exposed to many of the same risks. If things had gone wrong, I could have faced serious consequences myself, regardless of who was actually in charge.

Looking back, what strikes me is that I was never really considered a partner. The business belonged to them. They made the money, made the decisions, and held the power. I benefited from the lifestyle in certain ways. They paid for many of my expenses and I never lacked for drugs. But I wasn't building anything of my own. I was supporting someone else's world.

Dating Eljay was different. For the first time, I wasn't simply the girlfriend of a drug dealer. He treated me more like an equal. I developed my own customers, handled my own sales, and kept my own profits. At the time, it felt empowering. In reality, it marked the point where I became even more deeply invested in a life that carried very real consequences.

The title comes from the bright orange prison pants Eljay often wore around the house. They had been issued during one of his jail sentences, and for reasons I never understood, he kept wearing them long after he was released. They became strangely ordinary, almost invisible through familiarity. Looking back, they were a constant reminder of the risks we were taking, yet they never seemed enough to make either of us stop.

Despite years of participating in criminal activity, I have no criminal record. I have been extraordinarily lucky, but luck is only part of the story. Privilege also played a significant role. As a white, middle-class woman raised in a strict religious environment, I had learned how to present myself as innocent and trustworthy. There were moments when I was effectively caught in the middle of illegal activity, yet suspicion passed over me. I could convincingly play the role of someone who had no idea what was going on, and people believed me.

This painting isn't about celebrating those years. It's about confronting the uncomfortable truth that consequences are not distributed equally. Some people pay with prison sentences. Others escape accountability altogether. The orange jail pants became a symbol of that imbalance, while Granddad, illuminated in the light, reminds me that even in the darkest chapters of my life, there were still quiet moments of innocence and humanity that somehow endured.