I used to be part of the art world but I just can’t stomach it any more. Now I’m in prison, and it suits my conscience better. Back in the 1980s, art was my life. Aged 16, I fell head over heels for painting and could imagine nothing better than spending my life working in museums.

Looking back almost 40 years, I see my younger self, starstruck in Paris. I’m staring up with awe at Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa and greedily gobbling up the story of how it scandalised the art world. That sickening green cadaver that almost fell out of the frame had me weeping with admiration. Of course it shocked the critics. They hated the grisly truth: the emaciated corpse that was a direct challenge to government corruption and incompetence.

This was a history painting that focused on something scandalous, current and controversial. It exposed the government nepotism and corruption that placed an incompetent captain in charge of a navy frigate that was subsequently shipwrecked. There were insufficient lifeboats, and he and his fellow officers saved themselves, abandoning the lower-class crew to death by murder, cannibalism, starvation.

Géricault thrust this gruesome horror right in front of polite society’s eyes. He starkly showcased the extreme individual suffering that results from political corruption and self-centred individualism. I was bowled over by the realisation that art........

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