"The art of William Farmer spans the worlds of social and psychic violence with a vision akin to Blake's or Bosch's. So merciless and sensitive an art is an act of liberation of the highest order; it diagnoses man's wretchedness with surgical skill and compassion-always as the indispensable prelude to healing. Such work is supremely apart from the addle-pated huskstrings of New York salons. So it is not to be thought strange that the art of Farmer is a voice in the desert that he wanders in dry places, speaking a word of salvation, which the powers of church and state unite in despising. No wonder; his work is a portrayal of death, a myth of the present world and its ways, wrestling with demons and false men. As such it is a gift that demands of the beholder all that it first exacted of the artist; that he live and suffer on behalf of others, find hisjoy in unlikely places, and above all speak the unpalatable truth of man's inhumanity to man. The world will know in its evil wisdom how to deal with such a man; but his friends, know another method- that of contemplation, wonder, and gratitude."

Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
From Danbury Prison