The True Artist Breaks Out of Jail

Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri and artist Rosemary Clunie offer journeys into the human spirit for our times.

The True Artist Breaks Out of Jail is a provocative collaboration between Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri and renowned artist Rosemary Clunie. Pushing the possibilities of text and image to their limit, this book addresses questions of life in our times through the potent energies of poetry and painting. It journeys into the human spirit and its yearning for truth and authenticity as it examines key contemporary subjects ranging from war and climate change to the wounds and wonders of the human psyche.

Exploring the modern world through a joint creative output, Okri and Clunie strive to inspire a richer relationship to art and to democratize the art experience--marrying the mystery of image with the accessibility of language. Combining autobiographical elements with fragments of fiction, Okri and Clunie appeal to the two ancient aspects of brain and spirit in all of us. The result is a thoughtful and powerful interpretation of our world by two important voices in our current discourse.