These Paintings Capture the First Post-Prison Meals Of Wrongfully Convicted People

Prison food has occupied Julie Green’s art for decades. In the series Last Supper, which generated some buzz a few years ago, Green paints the last meals of death row inmates. Green—who uses gender-neutral pronouns—has painted 800 last meal plates to date, and their artist statement states that the series won’t stop “until capital punishment is no longer.”

Last Supper might focus on food at the end of life, but Green’s newest project, First Meal, highlights a new beginning. First Meal will be a series depicting the first meals of former prisoners after being exonerated from wrongful conviction.

Green does the work in collaboration with Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, reported Rolling Stone. Exonerees are given a questionnaire—it asks things like “who did you eat with?” and “is there any particular reason you wanted the food you ordered or had?”—and then Green paints the meal on canvas.

The first painting in the series showed scallops, cheese grits, hummus, and vegetables—as eaten by Kristine Bunch, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 16 years, Green told NPR. Another painting, of a lobster floating in front of a tree-lined landscape, commemorates Valentino Dixon’s trip to Red Lobster after 27 years of wrongful imprisonment. Others include pancakes and a Denny’s logo, and a club sandwich and fries.

Green told Rolling Stone that First Meal was initially meant to come after Last Supper, with the end of capital punishment, but Green said, “…the end is not in sight, and I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

In an interview with NPR, Sara Sommervold, an attorney at the Center on Wrongful Convictions, said that the first meal is a turning point for the formerly convicted since they’re unable to choose their own food during their years of imprisonment—or even consider its color or flavor. As MUNCHIES has reported, prison food tends to not only be in low in quality, but it’s often served in too-small portions and prepared in unsanitary conditions.

While the center’s focus is on policy reforms including increased DNA testing and better interrogation practices, Sommervold told NPRthat projects like First Meal can also show the humanity of people in prison. Each series focuses on the stories of individuals—in addition to protesting current systems of incarceration. As Green told Rolling Stone, because of the Last Supper series, their mother stopped supporting capital punishment.

But although First Meal might sound more hopeful than Last Supper, Green acknowledged that the pleasure of the meal doesn’t counteract the burden of the years spent wrongfully convicted. “Of course the meal is celebratory, but it is nothing compared to all those lost years,” they told NPR.

Although Green has begun work on First Meal, they say that Last Supper will continue. They wrote in an email to MUNCHIES, “I continue to add fifty new final meal plates until we no longer have capital punishment.”