Pat Phillips, The Farm, 2018

Pat Phillips: My name is Pat Phillips. I'm a painter. 

It’s a depiction of prison laborers working in the field. I think the idea of the shoes for myself, kinda going back to this sort of tongue-in-cheek, back-and-forth concept with humor, using these sort of mundane images. 

I remember my older brother taught me to clean the shoes with a toothbrush and keeping your shoes very clean, because that's what people notice, and you do get a certain level of respect when people see you have nice, fresh shoes. And that's something that sort of translates within the prison system. You know, what kind of shoes you have, and having very clean sneakers. Which will essentially get muddy while working in the field.

Narrator: The title of this work references a 1998 film of the same name, about the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary–known as Angola–located not far from where Phillips grew up, in Pineville, Louisiana. The prison has been described as a modern-day plantation due to the unpaid and brutal forced labor performed by inmates there.

Pat Phillips: Growing up, my dad was in the military for thirty years and then after retiring from the military he ended up becoming a lieutenant at the prison.

Narrator: Phillips's father worked there for ten years. 

Pat Phillips: Where I grew up, it's pretty rural. Like, I'm from a town that's about 15,000 people, and so it's just kinda the landscape. You do see a lot of farmland. You know, it's kinda just pulled directly from that, and you're seeing how the agricultural system is done in Louisiana. Especially with the prisoners.