Look again. A blindfolded Lady Justice fails to see a glum child in the corner. And the carton’s short six-digit bar code slyly matches the inmate number of the artist who made the drawing: Michael C. Skakel.
“Who Kidnapped the Truth?” as the 2012 piece is called, is one of the many paintings, murals, portraits and drawings that Mr. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, quietly turned out in prison after being convicted in 2002 of the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley when they were 15-year-old neighbors in Greenwich, Conn.
Freed last month on bail after a judge found fault with the trial, Mr. Skakel, 53, has declined interviews on the advice of his lawyer. Prosecutors still consider Mr. Skakel responsible for Ms. Moxley’s death and say they will press to have his conviction reinstated. But his art offers a look into his life in prison, where he seemed to find solace in creativity.
Jeff Greene, 45, the head of Connecticut’s Prison Arts Program and Mr. Skakel’s instructor in prison, estimates that his student made “hundreds of artworks” during his incarceration.
In that dehumanizing world, where occupants dress alike, eat alike and follow the same regimen, “their art does their living for them in the outside world,” Mr. Greene said.
“That he had art, that saved him,” he said of Mr. Skakel. “That gave him a way to continually have evidence that he was who he thought he was and not who his day-to-day world told him he was.”
The two met six years ago at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, where Mr. Greene runs twice-monthly workshops for inmates. The program began in 1978 and operates in Community Partners in Action, a nonprofit organization that, in an earlier form, listed Mark Twain among its board members.
At least 18 of Mr. Skakel’s works have appeared in shows that Mr. Greene curates to bring inmate art to the attention of the outside world.
The colored-pencil-on-paper milk carton was one; another was a cheeky but poignant still life that Mr. Skakel called “Food Pornography for Prisoners.”
Sumptuously painted in rich reds and succulent yellows, it depicts a crystal bowl filled with ice. Nine zaftig shrimp spill out of the bowl in their come-hither best.
Mr. Skakel also painted elaborate acrylic-on-cinder-block murals inside the prison school, child-friendly posters for the reception area and balmy tropical scenes where inmates receive their dialysis. “His art is all over the place,” reported Vito Colucci, Jr., a private investigator who visited.
Relatives got holiday cards he designed. Charities received donated works for auction, some of which went to buy textbooks for former inmates attending a community college where one of Mr. Skakel’s prosecutors teaches. Mr. Skakel also volunteered his services to indigent prisoners who wanted portraits sent home for the holidays.
He nearly quit from eye strain until a cousin, an artist, suggested flipping his canvas around. Now he paints upside-down, his brother David Skakel said.
Though much art made in the program belongs to the inmates, some of Mr. Skakel’s work will remain at the prison: florid Corinthian columns on library walls; panoramic scenes of hot-air balloons passing over snowy mountains, a cozy tent pitched by a stream, and a canoe floating past someone sprawled in a beach chair, his back to the viewer.
Sprinkled throughout are whimsical garden scenes that use trompe l’oeil to conjure up a flower box populated by sprites, songbirds perched on a trellis and other vignettes.
Mr. Skakel’s hand is also evident in the reception area. There, a framed poster by Mr. Skakel features a smiling Thomas the Train under the words, “Thank you soooo much for visiting!” Close by is a shelf of books with the motto “Televisions make great bookends!” Slipped in among the famous titles are “My Pet Bee and Me,” a children’s book that Mr. Greene said Mr. Skakel was working on, and “Dad Loves George,” a wistful reference to the son Mr. Skakel seldom saw.
“He had no idea he had this in him,” Mr. Skakel’s sister-in-law Eileen Skakel said. “This was not something he did before.”
David Skakel said his brother’s repertory before entering prison consisted of “stick figures.”
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