Untitled [Inmates reading]

In July 1959, a Sausalito newspaper reported that Barton had been arrested on a charge of “furnishing narcotics.” Just a few weeks earlier, the same newspaper had announced an exhibition of his drawings at the Tides Bookstore. While in prison that year, Barton made this metacomposition of the artist sketching his fellow inmates, as well as the drawings nearby. In these works, as in drawings made during later periods of incarceration, Barton portrays his cellmates as sensitive souls.