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| Painting A Picture Of Freedom |
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| News - Linn County News | |||
| Written by Roger Sims | |||
| Wednesday, 02 December 2009 09:00 | |||
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Tim Prock was bored. He had injured his back during a ball game and found himself lying for nine months in a prison infirmary. He was doing time in an Oklahoma penitentiary, mostly for burglary, but increasingly for his attempts to escape.  While he was in the infirmary, however, he discovered he had artistic ability. At first, drawing the children of his nurses from photos, he graduated to painting when an inmate orderly furnished him with paints and helped him develop his talent. Inspired by the art he was able to create, Prock said his attitude to the world began to change from negative to positive. In 1985, the inmate artist got perhaps the biggest break in his life. After winning a court case that threw out a conviction in Oklahoma, he was transferred to the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. And it was there he met a woman who was a social worker with the Missouri Department of Family Services. Donna Prock, now Tim’s wife, said that a friend told her about Tim. A true believer in the ability of people to rehabilitate themselves, Donna saw Tim’s sentence as harsh and unjust. And then there was Tim’s art, which simply amazed her. After seeing photos of his paintings, she contacted him and asked if she could see the works. He sent her an invitation to a banquet in the prison. “I saw a tall, thin man with long hair,” she said about their first meeting, adding that he looked “scared to death.” At their first meeting, she said she knew he would be in her life, although she wasn’t ready to say it was love at first sight. “The chance of this working are nil to none,” said Donna about a romantic relationship between a prisoner and someone on the outside. But still there was something about this man. “It struck me that here’s a man serving 45 years to life for robbery, and he’s never hurt anybody,” she said. She began working to secure his freedom, and as she visited with him, love blossomed along with his artistic skills. After his release from prison in 1992, the couple moved to a five-acre tract southwest of La Cygne in 1993. It was a dream for independence and living in the country that drew the couple to Linn County. “I had a book that talked about five acres and independence,” Tim said. Working at a publishing company and then as a handyman, the artist began to thrive as he shed his past. He developed a growing number of clients in the Waldo neighborhood of Kansas City, Mo. At the same time, he continued to practice art, and was even accepted at the Kansas City Art Institute. Donna, who currently is director of the Paola Senior Center, and Tim have continued to add to their five acres in Linn County. Now it is 27 acres, and the couple have traded in a mobile home tucked away in the woods for a home connected to running water. Tim, whose art ranges from two-dimensional to three-dimensional acrylic pieces, continues to keep his studio back in the woods. The overhead door has a mural comprised of silhouettes of children at play. Inside the storage room there are more than 50 paintings. A trailer near the couple’s home is filled with paintings ready to take to the next art show or gallery opening. He has shown at galleries in Kansas City and Paola, as well as several art fairs. Realistic and conceptual paintings fill the studio, and now Tim is working on a series of acrylic paintings that use only red, blue and yellow. But one of his favorite paintings remains one that he did in prison. “The Escape Artist” has a photo of a tall, thin man with long hair, a man who looks much like Tim. In this painting, the man is stepping into the picture, escaping his past and looking for a brighter future.
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