Stephen Tafka’s book The Art of Crime is immersed in British prisons and his work as a teacher of fine arts, where he manages to teach the supposedly untrained
The book describes life in prisons in the United Kingdom (file image) (
Image: Getty Images)
A prisoner’s seemingly innocent picture on a tennis court caught his art trainee unprepared when it was revealed that he depicted the place where he scattered body parts of his murder victim.
The killer cut his victim and placed her body in the bushes around the edges of a tennis court and now used the same court as the vision for his latest work.
The revelation came when art teacher Stephen Tafka was touring the prison when he began his career helping prisoners behind bars in the UK.
He told the Mirror: “I asked the student why he was painting a tennis court and I found out that this is where he buried his body parts.
“Nothing in my training prepared me for that.”
Mr Tafka’s book The Art of Crime looks at his work in prisons in the UK and his work where he has managed to teach supposedly untrained students, but he said that the longer he worked, the more he seemed to it is he who is serving his sentence.
He added that writing this grim comic gave him relief and helped him survive.
The Art of Crime is a new book
Writing about the meeting with the killer, he explained that there was a small man who was standing awkwardly in front of a tripod, on which he thought there was a particularly clumsy drawing on a tennis court, and the prisoner could not understand the tennis player.
Mr. Tafka said that this was a curious topic, so he asked the student why, of all the things he could choose to paint, he chose a picture of a tennis court in a park with swings and slides in the background.
But before he could answer, Greg, the class teacher, rushed over, grabbed Mr. Tafka by the elbow, and led him into his cupboard in the store.
“He scattered the body parts there. He cut a woman and put some of the pieces in the bushes next to a tennis court, “he told him.
The book looks inside the prison (
Image:
Getty Images)
Greg added that it was best not to ask the prisoner about this, as he was worried that he might inadvertently open a box of worms.
Mr Tfka added: “I was a qualified teacher, I graduated from PGCE, I had years of experience as a teacher of art and design, but nothing in my training prepared me for that.
“So, with a shaky stomach, I went back to the strange-looking man and offered to help him get the spray paint to make him look more like a tennis player.
“We had the strangest conversation as I struggled to transplant the tennis player’s arms and legs onto the front of his body, while trying not to mention the green and brown impastos that were supposed to be the bushes; I looked carefully and fortunately I couldn’t see anything hiding there. “
The book examines stories from his initial job interview, outlining his journey as a beginning prison art teacher to the depths of the prison’s underworld.
He felt he was serving a sentence (
Image:
AFP via Getty Images)
Written in the form of a diary, he often describes the absurd daily experiences of trying to help prisoners achieve qualifications despite all odds.
Mr. Tafka, who wanted to be a four-year-old artist, had to discover the art of teaching watercolors to brutal gangsters and introduce the killers to Monet.
He discovered that he was designing swimming pools for an armed robber and was trying to keep order in a classroom where one of the students believed to be Picasso Peppa Pig.
And all this was happening while he had to count the latex gloves in and out – so that the prisoners could not smoke them – and while he was careful not to boil behind the radiators in the classroom.
Mirror Books Managing Director Steve Hanrahan said: “This book gives an idea of rodents and everyone about the non-functionality of prison life, often disgusting conditions, but more importantly, the power of art to transform life.
“There is an undoubted fascination with the art that prisoners make because it has something to tell us about the human condition, and this book reveals the characters behind it.”
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