During Lent, the Oratory Church of St Boniface will exhibit the works of the distinguished Catholic artist and Oratory parishioner, Alfonse Borysewicz. I have posted previously on Alfonse here.

Alfonse was born in Detroit in 1957 and has been residing in Brooklyn since 1988 where he and his family have been members of the Oratory Church of St. Boniface. He received a master’s degree in theology before studying painting at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. Borysewicz has received two Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grants (1987, 1992) and a Guggenheim Painting Fellowship (1995). He has exhibited widely in the United States, Europe and Japan. His writings can also be found in Image. Jonathon Goodman wrote in Art in America, ‘Borysewicz’s ability to invent a language of transcendence which is both traditional and of the moment makes him a compelling artist’.

The paintings on exhibit for Lent are a continuance of Borysewicz’s work for the Oratory since the early 1990s (he has completed two side chapels, a processional cross as well as paintings for the residence chapel).

The Lenten paintings will cover the stained-glass windows for the 40 day period of Lent. These paintings with their austerity of near abstraction reverence the Icons of Christian antiquity. With a modern hand Borysewicz gives pictorial voice to the Catholic heritage. As Pope Benedict once observed, ‘next to the saints the art which the church has produced is the only real apologia for her history’.

Alfonse Borysewicz will also deliver the Brooklyn Oratory ‘2009 Baronius Lecture’ on 22 March at 4 pm. His lecture will be entitled ‘Art and Faith: Can You Be a Contemporary Artist and a Practicing Catholic?’. The lecture will be followed by a reception and tour of Alfonse’s paintings. See here for more details.

Left image: ‘Emmaus’, 2007; Right image: ‘Mary Magdalene’, 2007.