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Maine artist Robert Shetterly will tell the story of his Americans Who Tell the Truth portrait project, which endeavors to create a healing community of truth tellers who insist that the United States lives up to its ideals. Since it began two decades ago, the project has promoted positive citizenship in more than 40 US states, engaging viewers in contemplation of issues involving race, materialism, women’s rights, climate stewardship and environmental sustainability, disabilities, militarism, and more.

When he visits CGH, Shetterly will highlight portraits that explore the nature of power, the power of resistance, how people tend to emphasize the rule of law only when it’s convenient, how the ethics of capitalism have undermined the ethics of democracy, and how a political system beholden to financial interests is vulnerable to failure.

Shetterly will demonstrate the capacity of art as both medium and message in a talk framed around the inspiring stories of portrait subjects whose courage, perseverance, and love of justice light a way forward. Throughout the talk, he will project images of portraits while telling the stories of their subjects and investigating the issues that motivated them to embody true American patriotism.

Biography

While earning a degree in English from Harvard University, Robert Shetterly also took courses in drawing. After graduating and moving to Maine, he produced the editorial page drawings for The Maine Times and illustrated the National Society’s newspaper, Audubon Adventures, as well as approximately 30 books. He is also well known for his series of 70 painted etchings based on William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell,” and for another series of 50 painted etchings reflecting on the metaphor of the Annunciation.

Over the past two decades, Shetterly has been painting a series of portraits titled Americans Who Tell the Truth and exhibiting them around the country, including showings at forums ranging from university museums to grade school libraries, sandwich shops, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, and the Superior Court in San Francisco. To date, the exhibits have visited more than 40 states. He has also traveled to Rwanda to work in a village of survivors of the 1994 genocide and to Palestine twice for arts projects in refugee camps.

In 2007, Shetterly gave the commencement address at the �Թϱ��� which awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. He has also received an honorary degree from the University of Maine at Farmington and a Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Southern Maine. And he has been named a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, enabling him to serve week-long residencies at colleges around the country.

Richard Kane’s documentary film about Shetterly, Truth Tellers, premiered in the fall of 2021 and has been screened in theatres across the country and at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

After Dutton Books published an initial book comprising portraits from the Americans Who Tell the Truth project, New Village Press has published Portraits of Racial Justice (2021), Portraits of Earth Justice (2022), and Portraits of Peace Makers (2024).

Suggested Reading

Shetterly, Robert, et al. Portraits of Peacemakers: Americans Who Tell the Truth. New Village Press, 2024.