From the foreword to the catalog, The Souls, Volume 4, by Laura Madeleine, Director:

This catalog chronicles the Fourth Annual Souls Shot: Portraits of Victims of Gun Violence. The exhibition represents only a small fraction of those affected by the epidemic of gun violence. 

The artists participating in this project were randomly paired with the families and friends of victims, or, in some cases, artists already had personal connections with victims. The artists set out to illuminate the lives of these victims. The varied approaches and mediums used by the artists are a fitting testament to the unique qualities of each of the souls portrayed.

Families of the victims constantly face questions and comments about their loved ones, mostly about the circumstances of the gun violence. We seek to focus on the lives that were lived before that split-second, unacceptable decision was made by the shooter. These people did not deserve the consequences of that devastating choice. These people were—and are—more than numbers.

This catalog represents the commitment of all who are involved in the Souls Shot Portrait Project. We will continue to bring to the public intimate glimpses into the lives cut short by gun violence; to raise awareness of the terrible cost to our communities; to touch hearts and minds.

This year presented us with the challenges of the pandemic. Communication between the artists and families had to be virtual, and our established method of exposing the public to our portraits through touring exhibitions had to be sidelined. We are making the exhibitions available online and through various virtual experiences. Our website also includes a list of resources on how to get involved in the mission to end gun violence.

On behalf of all those who participated in creating this exhibition, we hope you will be moved by the images and that you will get to know the depth of these unique human beings; our fellow souls.

 Laura Madeleine, Executive Director and Curator

For the full commentaries from the artists, families & friends of the victims of gun violence on all the artworks, please view our virtual exhibition on this page.

The Portraits

For the full commentaries from the artists, familes & friends of the victims of gun violence on all the artworks, please view our virtual exhibition located on this page.

The Artists

Elisa Abeloff

Elisa Abeloff earned a Bachelor's Degree of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating in 1991 with a major in Printmaking and minor in Art History. During that time, she studied at the Santa Reparata Printmaking studio in Florence, Italy, and later at the Vermont Studio Center.

Tim Barton

Tim Barton is a working artist living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He holds an AA in Fine Arts from State University of New York, Fulton Montgomery Community College, as well as a Nuclear Regulatory Commission Senior Reactor Operator’s License for the commercial Salem Nuclear Power Plants. He is currently employed by Exelon Nuclear LLC as a Corporate Lead Emergency Preparedness Specialist. His art work is currently in several large collections as well as many private collections. https://www.timbartonart.com/about

Mary Brady Begnardi

Mary Begnardi is a mixed media artist and she draws, paints and makes things inspired by the people and places around me. She reverse draws and paint using permanent marker, acrylic, and spray paint on clear acrylic surfaces. Sometimes these pieces also incorporate collage elements. She explores themes of destruction, abandonment, survival, growth, belief, hope, and renewal. Her work has a narrative quality, but she welcomes the viewer's interpretation.

Maryanne Buschini

Maryanne Buschini is a painter, originally from Valhalla, New York. Her work concerns figures that reflect stories of celebration, hard work, family and love. Her art education includes a BFA from Kansas State University, a masters degree from University of the Arts, and continuing art studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art, the Barnes Foundation and other art centers and workshops. She has worked as a graphic designer and taught art in K-12 and university art departments. Her narrative figure paintings have been exhibited in Philadelphia/NY area galleries, awarded prizes in multiple juried shows. She has presented her work in a solo exhibition in 2019, and in 2020 was awarded a painting residency at Bethany Arts Center in New York.

Rhona Condeloro

Rhona Condeloro is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to painting, she works with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts as a teaching artist and is on the faculties of the Chester Springs Art Studio and Community Arts Phoenixville.

Mercedes Deleguardia

Mercedes Deleguardia is an Artist-Educator from West Chester, Pennsylvania. She has been teaching painting and drawing at Avon Grove High School since 2006. She has a BFA from Tyler School of Art (2000) and an MA from Boston University (2020).

Helene Halstuch

Helene Halstuch lived in England and in France for twenty years where she received her BA Fine Art at the Central School of Art in London, and Art Teacher’s Certificate at London University. She relocated to Philadelphia in 1995 and is a member of the National Association of Women Artists and the Plastic Club, as well as being represented by The Chestnut Hill Gallery. This is the second portrait that Helene has painted for the Souls Shot Portrait Project, a venue she feels is a way to honor the memory victims of gun violence while bringing awareness of how these senseless murders affect the families and our whole community. On social media—Facebook: Helene Halstuch; Instagram: helenehalstuchpaintings

Christopher Hardgrove

The work of Christopher Hardgrove is intrigued by the absurd and its proximity to our everyday lives. Employing the intimacy of quotidian objects he draws the viewer towards a psychological and physical terrain of irrationality. The work investigates light, movement and stillness in 2d, 3d and 4d mediums in order to emphasize a human tendency to strive for order and logic within patterns of absurdity and futility.

Embracing unrefined aesthetics in craft oriented props, Hardgrove reveals hypocritical tensions within social systems. Engaging fragility and vulnerability multimedia video installations and performances walk the line between comfort and discomfort, euphoria and depression, and susceptibility and protection.

The work is developed in a procession from ideation to realization that is highly ordered and structured rejecting high art connotations of the centrality of elitist audiences. Softness and pliability as materiality is the starting point for this exploration that weaves, glues, melts, molds and engraves across a diverse set of mediums. Formal repetition, refined details and incongruity within these pieces examine societal concerns that invoke practice and dedication while allowing the materials to speak of their history and utilitarian nature while alluding to the precariousness of communally prescribed norms.

Garth Herrick

Garth Herrick (b. 1958) lives and works in the historic Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, and has been professionally engaged painting portraits for over half a century. He graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1985, with honors including the William Emlen Cresson, Jr. Memorial Traveling Scholarship in 1984. From 1988 to 1991 Herrick was the chief sculptor at Leonardo da Vinci’s Horse, Inc., where he reconstructed a life-size equestrian sculpture after the designs and plans of Leonardo da Vinci. In 2016 the Portrait Society of America awarded Garth Herrick with Signature Status in recognition of notable portraits he has painted over the past two decades, including Mayor Edward G. Rendell and Mayor John F. Street, for City Hall, fifteen federal judges from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, including the late Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., five club presidents of the Union League of Philadelphia, and Lieutenant Governor Mark S. Singel for the Pennsylvania State Capitol, in Harrisburg, in addition to painting and sculpting many acclaimed privately commissioned portraits of families and individuals.

Rebecca Hoenig

Through a wide array of media including drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, and mixed media sculpture, I am continually drawn to the spiritual aspects of art and the essential mystery inherent in all natural and artistic creation. For several decades I taught students of all ages at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before retiring in September 2019. I have participated in dozens of juried art shows including several solo exhibitions. www.rebeccajanehoenig.com (illustration). www.rebeccahoenig.com (all other art work).

Warren Keyser

Warren Keyser studied with Joseph Pavone at Radcliffe Art Gallery in Bristol, Pennsylvania and Bucks County Community College. He is a 1992 graduate of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and 1995 BFA graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2014, he started a small business, WK Fine Arts, which specialized in portrait painting and private drawing and painting lessons in Bucks County and Lambertville, New Jersey. Warren has exhibited his work consistently for over 10 years at Sidetracks Gallery, Wayne Art Center, PAFA FAME Gallery, and the Burrison Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania His work can be found in private collections on the East Coast. Warren has volunteered his time and art to support the Souls Shot Project in Philadelphia since 2018.

Guy M. Kiernan

I've been an artist and creating as long as I can remember. I love creating and making things; it's a passion that drives me, and brings out something inside of me that takes me to a place of peace and tranquility. I can get lost in myself and lose all track of time whether I'm drawing, painting, building, or imagining what to create. I've been working professionally as a graphic artist, illustrator, and multimedia developer for over twenty years. I love spending my free time with more traditional mediums like pen & ink, pencil, and paint. Art to me has always been a form of meditation: it brings out an inner peace in me that I cannot stop exploring, wondering, and playing with. I'm fascinated with drawing and painting people, and imagining who they are, what they are, and how they are in this world. I hope my artwork makes people wonder as well.

Marie Naples Maber

Degrees: 4-year Certificate in Painting, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 6-year BFA awarded from University of Pennsylvania in concert with PAFA; MA History of Art from Temple University. Work: full-time faculty member: Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey. Faculty member since 1993, teaching art history and studio art. Personal: painter, art historian, writer, and ceramist; married with two grown children.

Jeannie Moberly

Lincoln High School Philadelphia; Fleisher student in sculpture; BA Barnard College, New York City, Program in the Arts, cum laude; member of the Plastic Club, Philadelphia; INLIQUID member. Solo and group shows throughout my life. Participating as volunteer artist for events and public plein air; seamstress for clothing designers, costumes, sails; hand sewing Baroque reproduction curtains for the New York Metropolitan opera and embroidery; Art in Public places mural for the City of Davis; building models and furniture; drafting for water systems; working with children as teacher's aide and camp counselor. Apprenticeships with Minoru Niizuma and Robert Arneson; painting student of Milton Resnick; sculpture student of Jeanne Linder. Skills: drafting, design, computers, communications, working with people and machinery, physical labor, research and investigation and art in a variety of media, geometry, folk dancing, and bicycling. http://moberly.cjfearnley.com

Nathalie Miller

Nathalie Miller is an artist living in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Utilizing any media necessary, she works to make art that focuses on current affairs and individuals' relationship to the world.

Laurie Lamont Murray

The years spent as an architecturally trained interior designer are built into Laurie Lamont Murray’s paintings and metal sculptures. She becomes immersed in the interplay of shapes and colors, layers and line, creating work that is both geometric and gestural with an overriding sense of design. Laurie’s work has won numerous awards and is included in corporate and private collections throughout the United States.

Laura Orfanelli

Laura Orfanelli is a self-taught artist based out of Chester County. She works with acrylics and enjoys using bright, powerful color. 

Karen Ruggles 

Karen Ruggles is an assistant professor of computer science specializing in Digital Art and 3D animation at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania.

Celeste Schor

I've been an artist all my life. Started drawing on the walls with a dime. Didn't get in trouble either. Though my kindergarten teacher yelled at me for coloring the wrong block. Anyway, I went to Tyler School of Art where I met a couple professors who are my heroes even now. I've done some shows —three solo and several group shows (Woodmere Art Museum juried show and National Arts Program juried shows). These days, I paint commissioned portraits and do some work for causes and people I care about.

B. Douglas Smith

B Douglas Smith is a modern artist living and working in South Philadelphia. His process is meditative and inspired by the act of creation. He aims to create work that will inspire deep conversation and self reflection. He invites you to reach out to him on Facebook or Instagram @therealbigbadbry and will open his Italian market studio for visits by appointment.

Caroline Stoughton

Caroline Stoughton is a Philadelphia-based painter. The subjects of her paintings are drawn from childhood experiences that continue to bring her happiness today, as well as her global travels and studies. The colors that Stoughton utilizes in her paintings are inspired by the flowers she would pick with her grandmother which is something she forever holds dear in her heart. Stoughton translates the colors of those flowers into the colors of all of her subjects, in a way that makes sense to her, as a constant reminder of the vibrancy of life. Stoughton is a graduate of Tyler School of Art and Architecture as well as the most recent recipient of the Richard Cramer Color Award. Her work is exhibited in private collections throughout North America and Europe. For more information please visit www.carolinestoughton.com.

June Terrell

I am a Philadelphia clay sculptress. I am also a retired Occupational Therapist. I’ve always had a yearning to create paintings and sculptures. The process and the results give me a feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment. I’ve noticed over the years as life gets busy I still have the yearning to produce art. I’m primarily self taught but have attended occasional classes, from my youth and recently. I like to give an impression of movement with my pieces and make the empty spaces apparent. Instagram: asculptress.

Wint Thu

This is my first public show! I made art for myself and myself alone for most of my life. Creating has helped me through the highs and lows of being human. I also create art as a way to reconnect with my Burmese culture and get back in touch with my roots while still intertwining it with my American culture that I have come to know and love. I am also a strong advocate for education, gender equality, and protection for women and minorities from violence. My upbringing in Myanmar and my time in the American foster care system has widened my world view, and my beliefs trickle and seep through my artwork. I draw inspiration from science, cultures, advocacy, and experiences I encounter in my daily life. I believe that staying omnivorously curious leads to personal and artistic growth.

Lauren Vargas

Lauren Vargas lives and works as an artist in North Philadelphia and her current work primarily focuses on portraiture. Her work has focused largely on her immediate environment: friends, family, my neighborhood. She has worked as a community artist for many years, teaching after-school art classes in painting, drawing and silk-screening to middle school and high school students in Hunting Park. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Fine Arts in 2005. You can check out more of her work at lauren-vargas.com.

Juliette Watts

Juliette Watts is a painter and illustrator living outside of Philadelphia. She worked for many years as a medical illustrator for the VA Medical Center and later as scientific illustrator for the US Forest Service. She has illustrated three children’s books. Currently she focuses on watercolor landscapes as well as drawing and painting the figure. She monitors and participates in life drawing workshops at the Plastic Club, one of the oldest art clubs in Philadelphia.