Join us for this webinar with artist Robert Shetterly, who is renowned for his series of portrait paintings titled Americans Who Tell The Truth, which depicts 265 activists (including WBW Board President Kathy Kelly & WBW Executive Director David Swanson!) who are advocating for justice. Each portrait is a portal into American history, a story of courage and persistence that reminds us that the power of democracy lies in the determined actions of the people. Taken together, the portraits demonstrate how change requires a community; meanwhile, each individual portrait is a testament to the fact that through persistence, each of us has the power to make a difference.

In this webinar, Robert will show images and tell stories about many of our most persuasive peace makers whom he has painted -- and we'll talk about why they don't get more traction, and what that means.

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About Robert Shetterly:
Robert Shetterly was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated in 1969 from Harvard College with a degree in English Literature. At Harvard he took some courses in drawing which changed the direction of his creative life -- from the written word to the image. Also, during this time, he was active in Civil Rights and in the Anti-Vietnam War movement.

After college and moving to Maine in 1970, he taught himself drawing, printmaking, and painting. Robert´s paintings and prints are in collections all over the U.S. and Europe. He is 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. His painting has tended toward the narrative and the surreal, however, for more than 20 years he has been painting the series of portraits Americans Who Tell the Truth. There are now nearly 270 portraits in the exhibit. Portraits from the exhibit have been traveling around the country since 2003.

The portraits have given Shetterly an opportunity to speak with children and adults all over this country about the necessity of dissent in a democracy, the obligations of citizenship, sustainability, US history, and how democracy cannot function if politicians don't tell the truth, if the media don't report it, and if the people don't demand it.

Shetterly has engaged in a wide variety of activist and humanitarian work with many of the people whose portraits he has painted. In the spring of 2007, he traveled to Rwanda with Lily Yeh and Terry Tempest Williams to work in a village of survivors of the 1994 genocide there. And then to Palestine twice with Lily Yeh for art projects in refugee camps. Much of his current work focuses on the intersections of climate change, capitalism, systemic racism and militarism.

Richard Kane's film Truth Tellers about the Americans Who Tell the Truth project premiered in the fall of 2021 and has been showing across the country.

In 2005, the Maine People's Alliance awarded him its Rising Tide award. In May 2007, Rob received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Southern Maine and gave the Commencement Address at the University of New England which awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters. In 2009, he was named a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow that enables him to do week long residences in colleges around the country. The University of Maine at Farmington awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2011. In 2023, he received the Ashley Bryan Award for Arts and Humanities from the Maine Education Association.

Robert Shetterly lives, with his partner Gail Page, a painter and children's book writer and illustrator, in Brooksville, Maine.

Co-sponsored by the Florida for a World BEYOND War chapter and Veterans For Peace Chapter 136 - The Villages, FL.

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