Bernard Gilardi, Margaret Griffin, Norbert Kox, Meg Lionel Murphy, Michael Newhall, Rosemary Ollison, Curtis Wilks, M. Winston
March 28 through May 10, 2025
Gallery Tour: Saturday, April 19, 2 p.m.
Director Debra Brehmer/Manager Paul Salsieder
Reception: Friday, March 28, 5 to 7 p.m.
Gallery Night and Day: April 11 and 12
Installation view with room of paintings by Curtis Wilks, sculpture by Margaret Griffin.
The word “behold” appears in Biblical text to introduce something truthful or profound. Like the parting of curtains, it is a word that reveals something potentially astonishing.
We generally do not ‘behold’ art, but more clinically ‘view’ it. And while art is made, created, or produced, it is less seldom channeled from a spiritual realm.
Throughout the history of Modernism and into the present, the art world has approached notions of faith and spiritualism with squeamish reserve. This partially changed with the tremendous popularity of the Hilma af Klint exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 2019. Klint was a spiritualist who believed in the mystic properties of the universe. It was the most attended exhibition in the history of the museum.
Portrait Society’s new group exhibition looks at the broad intersections of art and faith and the ways in which the sacred materializes in a studio practice. It is an exhibition abundant with stories, personal struggles, and artistic mysteries.
The artists in this exhibition have employed faith in multiple ways, from the didactic or directly Biblical to broadly interpretive contemporary frameworks.
Anchoring the presentation is a room of Biblical paintings created by Curtis Wilks (b. 1955) while he was in prison for eight years for a bank robbery. While incarcerated, Wilks survived a suicide attempt as well as the withdrawal symptoms of heroin addiction. After what he describes as a miraculous visitation, he began to recall and depict Bible stories from his Pentecostal upbringing. Wilks made this body of about 150 paintings from 2013 until his release in 2015. The paintings were preceded by graphite drawings.
The narrative cycle of the imprisonment, torture, execution, and resurrection of Christ as well as the promise of salvation helped Wilks overcome mental instability and process his own trauma. The paintings flow like story boards with each painting holding multiple, carefully described details. Wilks' visual language is inventively diagrammatic, similar to Native ledger drawings. It is the artist's wish that this body of work be shown in its entirety, as a teaching gospel. This is the first time Portrait Society has presented a near-complete selection of the paintings.
Bernard Gilardi (1920-2008) examined and re-staged Catholicism in his oil paintings, often humorously chiding the absolutism of the Church as well as his Italian family’s religiosity while also touching on contemporary social issues. Milwaukee-based artist Rosemary Ollison (b. 1942) is guided by daily dialog with Jehovah. She works across disciplines, creating textiles, clothing, drawings, paintings and poetry. Margaret Griffin (b. 1999), a graduate of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, has recently been considering how the importance of labor and toil, as well as the necessity of self-protection, might relate to the Biblical context of the "Armor of God" as spiritual protection.
Contemporary painter Meg Lionel Murphy (b. 1986) turns to Medieval history, folklore, the mystical side of Catholicism, and healing practices to bring strength and safety to her female protagonists within allegorical, metaphysical landscapes. Norbert Kox (1945-1918) was a visionary painter in Wisconsin who challenged the precepts of religious orthodoxy with apocalyptic oil paintings and constructions. Michael Newhall (b. 1945), an artist and Buddhist monk, has for decades employed Buddhist iconography and philosophy within large-scale paintings and drawings. His art practice, like his commitment to meditation, is interwoven in his daily life. Newhall is a 2025 Nohl Fellow in the established category.
Incarcerated artist, M. Winston (b. 1964), also a Buddhist, creates tiny abstract paintings of imagined landscapes that suggest unbounded cosmic freedom. He also designs small houses out of scrap materials and recycled paintings as he anticipates his release in two years.
The artists in “Behold” contribute to a trail of historic artists who kept art and faith aligned. These artists include Gertrude Abercrombie, a magical realist who considered herself a witch; the painter Jack Whitten, whose work was informed by ghost stories of his childhood; Marc Chagall; Titus Kaphar; Wassily Kandinsky; Hilla von Rebay; Agnes Pelton; Madge Gill; Mark Rothko; Anna Zemánková, among many others.
The intersection of art and faith is a complex topic, especially when belief systems are frequently used as justification for oppression or political legislation. The devotion required of a studio practice, however, takes on parallels with faith-based practices: The drive to make something and believe in what one does necessitates an enduring faith in the value of the undertaking. The forces that bring ideas to fruition or move the hand are often mysterious. To make art is to trust uncertainties and court the cosmic divine.
This exhibition explores the expansive ways that faith materializes in artistic content or affects studio processes in the art world.
