A Friendship That Started With a Painting

Last September, I found myself at the Returning Citizens Luncheon in Virginia. I’d written about that experience earlier. But what I hadn’t shared yet was the friendship that grew out of it.

Tremayne Seymour is an artist incarcerated at Lawrenceville Correctional Center. We connected through a painting. He’d created a piece that caught my attention, and I reached out. What started as a simple exchange about art turned into one of the most meaningful friendships of my life.

We communicate through GettingOut and JPay, the messaging platforms that connect incarcerated people to the outside world. Every message costs money. Every conversation is monitored. The infrastructure of connection is built on extraction, not relationship. But Tremayne and I have built something real inside those constraints.

He’s taught me about art as resistance. About creating beauty inside a system designed to crush the spirit. About finding ways to express wholeness when everything around you says you’re broken.

Our friendship is the origin of the From Within art show, a traveling pop-up featuring work by incarcerated artists at Lawrenceville. The show is built on a simple belief: art created inside prison walls deserves to be seen outside of them. And the people who create it deserve to be recognized as full human beings, not defined by their worst moments.

This friendship has changed me more than most. Not because it’s easy. Because it’s real. And because it keeps showing me that connection doesn’t need perfect conditions. It just needs two people willing to show up.

Read the full piece on Substack

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org