Motivated by the famous rock band Pink Floyd’s lyrics of “Echoes,” Kevin Shepler, a resident of San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, brought alive a one-of-a-kind piece of art.
“This vision came to me in 1990’s before I could draw,” said Shepler. “I finally got to draw this about a year an a half a go. I was listening to ‘Echoes,’ One of the lines in the lyrics is ‘By chance, two separate glances meet.’”
Initially, he struggled sketching out this piece to the point that he asked his family to send him a picture of two hands shaking because he could not shake his own hands to draw them.
Born in Brackett, Wisconsin, he joined the U.S. Marine at the age of 20. He was stationed at Camp Pendleton. In prison, he has instructed himself in the field of creativity while overcoming a hearing disability due to Ménière’s disease.
According to Shepler, at the beginning of his incarceration, he could not even draw stick figures. For him, art frees his mind from prison.
The artist said he considered music as his primary medium. Since he lost his hearing, he transferred his talent from audio to visual.
“I use a lot of the same terminology, pitch, tone, volume, rhythm, in learning both forms of arts,” Shepler explained. “Nowadays, I can only hear what I used to prior to 2010. After 2010, I can’t listen to music, it all sounds distorted.”
His portrait of Whoopie Goldberg showed her with her typical Whoopie grin over the rims of her eyeglasses. This particular drawing took him three to four hours to complete.
He brought his childhood memories to life as he painted out a perspective view of the driveway of the home of his aunt and uncle, a house he used to visit as a child. The idea of sketching out his paint came after his aunt had sent him a picture of their driveway. According to the artist, finishing the piece took him only two hours.
Shepler expressed his enthusiasm in relation to the time required to finish his artwork. “I never been the most patient guy,” Shepler said.
Gifted by perspective, Shepler’s imagination went wild as he sat on a CDCR bus on layover for couple of hours at San Quentin. He was able to see through the bus widow San Quentin infamous Tower One.
Later on at Chino State Prison, the memory sparked him to paint the image as he remembered it. He recalled that he was able to put it together with the assistance of pictures that he has seen of Tower One. When the artist was informed that Tower One was one of Jimmy Hendrix’s main motivation for writing his famous song Watch Tower, he was jubilant and felt excited that he had shared a common interest with a fellow artist.
“Jimmy Hendrix is my favorite left-handed guitarist, Shepler said.” “I played guitar since I was in kindergarten, and piano, trumpet.”
As an artist, his feel gifted and bless in being able to crossover his talents in a way others who may also suffer from hearing imperative will see and feel the power of healing through the glance of one vision perspective.
