Welmon Sharlhorne is a self-taught artist who learned his craft while wrongfully imprisoned in the Louisiana State Penitentiary ("Angola") for over twenty years. Born in 1952 – the fourth of 14 children – he grew up in rural Houma, Louisiana, during an era of harsh segregation. Leaving school without learning to read or write, he was convicted of robbing a grocery store in his early teens and spent several years in juvenile detention. Sharlhorne was 18 years old when he was sentenced to prison for extortion following a dispute with a homeowner over his pay for mowing a lawn. For that $10 crime, plus his previous convictions, Sharlhorne spent twenty-seven years in the harshest prison in Louisiana, Angola.
On a former antebellum plantation site, the Angola prison complex is still a working farm. Sharlhorne labored in cotton fields under the watch of armed guards on horseback. During his years in prison, he was beaten, stabbed, and did time in solitary.
While in prison, Sharlhorne began to make art. He noticed other inmates using their art as a form of currency to trade for cigarettes and win favors from guards. Sharlhorne began creating ink drawings using "prison tools" such as bottle caps, washers and bowls to create circles and curves, and tongue depressors to create straight lines. The only paper allowed to him was manila envelopes, which were provided "to contact" his non-existent lawyers. His meticulous pen and ink drawings of imaginary structures, people, buses, birds, and night skyscapes employ geometry and pattern and evoke a sense of spiraling time, likely reflective of his seemingly interminable incarceration.
Sharlhorne sold his works to other inmates, who sent them to family members and others outside of Angola. They eventually made their way into broader circulation and gained critical and market attention. His work became popular in the folk art and outsider art communities. During his incarceration, Sharlhorne's artwork was shown in galleries throughout the world, and four of his pieces are included in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Sharlhorne describes his self-taught style as "circle art," which still involves using straight and circular tools with ink pens to create magical creatures, architecture, clocks, buses, and Afro-centric faces, all with his name boldly incorporated into each piece. Sharlhorne continues to produce art and spends his time between his native city of Houma and the French Quarter in New Orleans.