Wilbur Niewald: The Studio Portrait

Many Kansas Citians have seen Wilbur Niewald painting on site in the city’s various parks, including Loose Park and Penn Valley Park, among others. While perhaps best known for these landscapes of Kansas City, Niewald has also painted portraits in his studio since the 1970s. The exhibition Wilbur Niewald: The Studio Portrait, looks at a selection of portraits of family, friends, and self-portraits.

Culled from private collections as well as from the artist’s studio, the exhibitions 14 portraits—some commissions, some of the artist and his family—span more than forty years of the artist’s personal history and his studies of the passage of time. These explorations of time are best examined in the four portraits of his wife Gerry (1973, 1976, 1985, and 2007) and in his three self-portraits (1975, 1998, and 2010) in the exhibition. The artist works from direct observation, and his subjects sit for at least 60 to 70 hours for each portrait.

Above: Wilbur Niewald, Self Portrait, 2010; oil on canvas, 32 x 23 in.; Courtesy of the artist.