The Artist in His Space

A word of warning: this story is not going to be journalistically neutral. Like many others who have had the privilege of spending time with artist Fulton Leroy Washington, a.k.a. Mr. Wash a.k.a. Wash, to his friends, I entered his universe in awe of his story and talent, and never left. I am an unabashed Wash evangelist, and if you ever get to meet him, I promise you will be, too.

Wash and I met back in 2016, as part of a story I was writing on President Obama’s clemency initiative. As Obama was leaving office, he was releasing a number of low level, non-violent drug offenders by way of either pardoning or commuting their sentences. While, for the record, Wash has always maintained his innocence, he happened to be one such individual whose sentence Obama reduced from life to time served.

There’s a reason Wash counts Tala Madani and Jeffrey Deitch as champions in his corner, why Drake (pre-Kendrick Lamar beef) drove to his Compton apartment to meet him. Beyond his remarkable skill as a self-taught artist, he is wise, charismatic, doggedly determined, and full of heart. Wash has told me before that he feels limited inside his body. Somehow it makes sense that his spirit is more expansive than his physicality can contain.

Even at age 71, Wash stays open to experiencing and learning more. His hunger to drink up every drop of life perhaps stems from his perception of life itself. “I approach it the way it was explained to me as a youth,” Wash once told me. “It’s a temporary passage. It’s not forever.”