Portrait Society Gallery is pleased to present two solo painting exhibitions that consider media, mark making and the act of scraping, covering or erasing as metaphors for the sensory language of experiencing and valuing our lives. 

Dominic Chambers, who is originally from St. Louis, MO., graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2016. He is currently mid-way through a graduate program at Yale University School of Art. This body of new work continues his exploration of love and nuturing as he envisions the sentient and spiritual beings who guide us. Chambers tends to create large scale paintings and drawings that reference his personal biography, African-American history, literature, and his relationship to the black body. He has exhibited his work in both solo and group exhibitions regionally. He has participated in a number of residencies including The Yale Norfolk summer residency and the New York Studio residency Program in Brooklyn, NY. This is Dominic’s second exhibition at Portrait Society. 

Skully Gustafson, a 2012 graduate of Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, has become one of Wisconsin’s foremost young painters to watch. As Gustafson creates lively spaces from a growing vocabulary of mark making and media, he views the paintings as windows to imaginary kingdoms where people and animals preen and convene. By juxtaposing images, symbols, and figures, Gustafson suggests the ways in which individuals are influenced, fortified, or defined by meanings outside themselves. Shifting ideas of public presentation and private self construction explore how an individual is many different and overlapping selves.

Gustafson is also a musician who performs with his partner, Erik Moore, in Cartoon Pussy. 

This is his second major exhibition at Portrait Society.