Michael Newhall: Facing It

This solo exhibition includes a selection of work from Newhall's multi-decade series that has focused on the facial motif. There is a great diversity in Newhall's approach to the human face,  ranging from representational examples to more amorphic, experimental, and radicalized approaches. In many instances the head is only implied, or may be covered by or compiled with metaphoric information. Cartoon elements may be interspersed with serious psychological inquiry. Newhall draws from his background as a Zen Buddhist monk, both spiritually and visually, where his figures are often adorned with traditional buddhist robes or relaxed in meditative poses. These heads are more than portraits. They are our multiplicity, our collectively diversity, our community, and our “sangha.” 

Michael Newhall is originally from Chicago, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin. The son of an artist, he had early exposure to both academic and contemporary art. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and the Art Students League of New York. While he was a organic farmer in northern Wisconsin, he taught at SAIC, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, University of Western Michigan, and at Naropa University. A change in life-trajectory saw Newhall develop his interest in Eastern philosophy into a vocation as a Zen Buddhist monk and later as a Zen teacher. After a visiting lectureship at Osaka Institute of Art, Newhall studied Zen in Japan, undertook monastic training and later became the Abbot of Jikoji Zen Center in California where he is presently an emeritus teacher. Newhall has received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship, and the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship. He has showed at Peltz Gallery and you can now find his work at Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee. Newhall’s painting has evolved from academic to abstract expressionism, into neo- expressionist figuration, to a conceptualism based on Asian influences, to Chicago Imagist variations of faces, to large sumi ink installations and into sculptural variations. His most recent work returns to expressionist narrative themes and continues his obsession with the head/face/bust motif.