Myuran Sukumaran has painted the one man with the power to save his life, and the condemned Australian’s inscription is equally powerful: “People can change”.

Sukumaran’s painting of Indonesian President Joko Widodo, unveiled on Tuesday, was started after his request for clemency was rejected in December.

Friends say he struggled emotionally, and then came the second blow when fellow Bali Nine member Andrew Chan’s clemency was also rejected.

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Indonesia has not set a date for the pair to face the firing squad but has them now incarcerated on the island where the sentence would be carried out.

When Sukumaran and Chan left Bali’s Kerobokan jail last week they were not only anxious about what was ahead but what they were leaving behind.

Both men have spent years building rehabilitation programs for fellow prisoners, keeping them off drugs and building life skills.

Sukumaran, 33, has used his artistic talent – recently recognised with a fine arts degree – to coach others.

Picking up his brushes again after the clemency decision was an important step, friends say.

On January 23, 2015 he signed the back, “Jokowi. Myuran Sukumaran. Kerobokan Prison. Bali. 23/01/2015. People can change”,  and returned to teaching.

His friend Ivar Schou, a Norwegian academic who collaborated with him to bring philosophy classes to Kerobokan, most admires Sukumaran’s inner-strength.

In a video interview released to help the campaign to save the pair, Professor Schou says Sukumaran’s execution is ‘incomprehensible”.

“What I see is you help other people to help themselves,” he says.

In the video, Sukumaran says his first five years in jail were aimless, until in 2009 he finally secured permission to start using his life to help others.

He recalls that before his 2005 for heroin smuggling, his idea of success was a selfish one.

“I still want to be successful, I still want to better myself, but I want to do it in a way that I can help somebody and encourage that person to do better,” he says.

The Australian pair have a last-ditch legal appeal in the Jakarta courts on Thursday, challenging the way Mr Joko’s rubber stamp rejection of clemency for drug offenders, in this case failing to consider the men’s rehabilitation.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is also in their corner and still hopeful of getting another chance to speak to Mr Joko.

Chan and Sukumaran had been a “force for good” in Indonesia’s fight against drugs and a credit to the country’s penal system, he said.

“I’m keen to talk to him again but in the end, I can request (and) he may or may not accept.”

Jakarta is awaiting some of 10 death row prisoners to finish legal appeals before setting a date for the executions, for which it must give at least 72 hours notice.

-AAP