Adam Thomas, an incarcerated artist, embraced his roots and his appreciation of many styles of art and through multimedia pieces.

“Art is so important [a] cause, I can create something that is not there,” said Thomas. “I can turn my feelings into something that I can see and put myself into a story I don’t have direct experience with.”

According to the artist, each drawing has a story, and his works showed his life narrative. Each piece depicted an enhanced version of his life.

His painting of the infamous Don Corleone from “The Godfather,” showed a well-known character from the late 20th century. Thomas, a third generation Sicilian-American, remembered growing up in a culture in which the character and movie represented his people in American popular culture. Although it highlighted negative aspects of immigrant families in the early 1900s, Thomas, half Sicilian on his maternal side, admired the film’s scenes of his family’s homeland of Corleone, Sicily, and its vision of Sicilian families prospering through hardships.

True artists would find ways to enhance their skills. In the midst of discouragement and depression, Thomas hit a breaking point and considered throwing in the towel, but he persevered. His painting of Master Yoda, a wrinkled, disproportioned, sci-fi creature, gracefully delivered wisdom.

Master Yoda represented an ode to the many artists who made a living from their art, a challenging and straining occupation. In his quest for perfection, Thomas’ murals ended up displayed on the walls of Donner Section.

He painted a mural of a tiger perched in a dense patch of bamboo, a tribute to the traditional Japanese style of art, which Thomas considered a favorite. He also designed a tattoo of a Japanese dragon resting on his shoulder.

Thomas also painted the legendary Spider Man, kick flipping in the clouds while riding a Santa Cruz skateboard. A 3-D depiction of the superhero’s skateboard showed the artist’s reminiscences of the days in which he skateboarded on the urban streets of his home city of Sacramento.

Thomas took approximately 10 hours to complete each of the murals. The work gave the artist entirely new experiences.

“I create my art with a few things in mind, nostalgia of better times, determination and sense of freedom that I could never fully lose with the power that I have being an artist,” he said.