Robert Lalah, Assistant Editor-Features

He sits on a turned-over bucket on the narrow sidewalk that runs along Olivier Road in St Andrew. Cars, buses and even large trucks whiz closely by as he focuses on the task in front of him. He grasps his paintbrush with intensity in his eyes and strokes the easel like a surgeon making a life-impacting incision.

Delroy Anderson has made this unlikely spot his base for the past year, working on paintings that he hangs on the fence beside him, hoping to attract buyers. His latest creations include images of US President Barack Obama and family. These have been catching the eyes of many a passer-by, and have forced Anderson to work overtime.

Recent Obama project

"This man really get everybody excited. Everybody want to have a painting of him in their house. I have to be focusing more and more on that now," he said when Sunday Arts paid him a visit, last week.

But there's more to this story than a man selling paintings on the roadside.

Delroy Anderson started out as a furniture-maker, working long hours at his father's small factory on Red Hills Road. He didn't have the greatest relationship with his dad, but he had bills to pay, so he stuck at it, even though he wasn't quite happy with the way his life was going.

One day, overcome with frustration with what he considered a life gone wrong, he got into an altercation with a man who lived close to him. Nobody was killed, but the result of the dispute was Anderson being brought before the court and sentenced to more than a decade in Kingston's notorious General Penitentiary.

It was within the confines of a musty prison cell that Anderson broke down. The once hot-headed, angry-at-the-world carpenter found himself in deep depression, unable to eat or sleep.

Rough experience

"That was a really low point for me. I never felt that bad before. I started to feel sorry for myself," he recalled.

After months of being down in the dumps, Anderson had an epiphany.

"Is like I just wake up one day, depressed as usual, and finally decide that something did have to change. I couldn't just continue feeling sorry for myself. I was already in this situation so I decide that I would just have to make the most of it," he said.

Anderson said he spent some time evaluating his life and what he had become. He was not happy. One of his greatest regrets up to that point was that he hadn't focused on his education.

"I say to myself that maybe if I did follow through with the education, I wouldn't have ended up in prison," he said.

This is where the change began. Anderson knew that the prison offered academic classes in different subject areas, but he was never inclined to find out more. But now that he was intent on turning his life around, he asked around and found out where the classes were held. Early one morning, he showed up, eager to learn more, only to be told that there was no space for him.

"The lady tell me that they coudn't take any more people. She said they reached the quota already. She tell me that I was too late," Anderson recalled.

But he was not about to give up that easily. For the next several weeks, Anderson showed up every day and stood for hours outside the room in which the classes were being held, hoping to persuade the teachers to let him in.

"Finally, one day the lady who was running the place say to me that she never see anybody so serious about learning, so she allow me to enroll," Anderson smiled at the memory.

Those classes helped the 40-something-year-old to start reading better than he ever did before.

"The teachers there really helped me a lot. By the time I was finished with the classes, I felt more like a real man than ever before," he said, his voice cracking.

After spending three years in lock-up, Anderson was up for parole and was successful in his application. He was released in 2001, a new man with new goals for himself.

"I was so excited to read any and everything. Anything I could find, I would just take it up and read it."

It was this new-found love for reading that lead him to one day snatch up a brochure for an overseas art school that he found on the ground at a New Kingston shopping centre.

"I just see it on the ground and start to read it and I see that it was offering art classes. You would send them the money and they would send you the lessons. It was for you to learn how to draw and paint," Anderson said.

Recognising talent

With help from family members, Anderson sent away for his first lesson and, when it came, he realised that this was something he would be willing to spend the rest of his life doing.

"There is a peace that come over me when I paint. I can't explain it. When I sit down and really start work, is like everything else get lock out," he said.

And so Delroy Anderson believes he has found his calling in life. The now 52-year-old is happier than he has ever been and has plans to start offering art classes to disadvantaged young people in his community.

"There are really a whole lot of people who end up - where I found myself - in prison. I felt like there wasn't any hope. But I find out that there is another way. I just want to show other people that there are other avenues that they can take."

robert.lalah@gleanerjm.com