Gil Batle

Born in San Francisco in 1962, Gil Batle developed his self-taught drawing skills over the course of 20 years as he served time in five different California prisons. Sentenced for fraud and forgery, Batle leveraged his artistic abilities through a secret and sought-after tattoo service. The demand for his skills protected him from the aggression of other inmates in San Quentin, Chuckawalla, and Jamestown—so-called “Gladiator School” prisons notorious for their gang violence. After his final release, Batle moved to a remote island in the Philippines where he honed his skills in drawing and created the carvings for which he is best known, pulling from his experiences in the prison system as inspiration for his work.

In the Philippines, Batle discovered materials other than paper and the skin of his tattoo clients to serve as a vehicle for his images. The artist began carving intricate portraits and narratives on the surface of ostrich eggs with a high-speed dental drill, creating pictorial panels on shells one-sixteenth of an inch thick. The panels feature relief carvings of people he met in prison and scenes from his daily life, such as methods of ‘ghost communication’ used by prisoners to pass messages without attracting the notice of the guards. Sometimes the artist removes sections of shell altogether to suggest a pattern of barbed wire or chain link fence lacing together to maintain the structure of the fragile egg, an object symbolic of new life.

Batle begins his carvings by finding the equator line of the asymmetrical egg and pencils a grid of horizontal and vertical lines to guide his design. The grid ensures that the pictorial panels will be perfectly parallel with the tops and bottoms of the eggs, which never meet at their exact axis points. The eggs depict narratives of prison violence and segregation, inmates who made wine and fed birds, and others who committed acts of brutality. Batle describes his work as a form of therapy the mythical, sometimes animalistic figures and repeating motifs of weapons and chains take on a dreamlike quality, and allow Batle to release his darkest memories onto the surface of the eggs.

After getting his start as an artist by forging checks and ID cards, Batle has forged an unusual path into the world of fine art. Three solo exhibitions have featured Batle’s work at the Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York City. His work is held by permanent collections at the 21c Museum Hotels, William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, and Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester. Batle continues to work across mediums from his home in the Philippines.

- Hannah Sheridan

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