In "Unveiled Roots," An Artist Digs Deep At CAW

Top: Artist Marquis Brantley. Bottom: Ezekiel Jaymar Brantley (Lost Tooth). Lucy Gellman Photos; all work by the artist. 

It's the moment, frozen in time, that flings the doors to a viewer's heart wide open. In the center of the canvas, a young boy smiles, his tongue pressed up against his gums where a tooth used to be. Hair spills over his shoulders and t-shirt; it extends out from the canvas, thick and gleaming. Even his eyes twinkle, caught in the process of shedding one's baby self. 

The steps that come next—the inevitable squeal of wonder, the big tooth that will erupt and grow in its place, the Tooth Fairy's nighttime visit—are all background noise. The joy is immediate, thunderous, so thick you can almost reach out and touch it.   

Ezekiel Jaymar Brantley (Lost Tooth) welcomes viewers to Made Visible: Unveiled Roots, a solo exhibition from painter Marquis Brantley running at Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) through March 1. A lifelong New Havener and self-taught artist, Brantley has created a space that both honors his family and recognizes its inherent holiness, telling a story of Black men and boys who are allowed to dream, to love, to live out loud and fully, and to grow old.

At CAW, it is both a soul-nourishing tour de force and a template for how the organization could better reflect New Haven all year round. The show is curated by artist, poet, theater-maker and writer Jasmin Agosto, who currently works as the programs and exhibitions manager at NXTHVN. Hours and more information are available here. 

"I want to do things to hopefully encourage and influence change for the better," Brantley said in an interview at the gallery last week, as two viewers made their way quietly around the space. "Art to me is also therapeutic. It kept me out of a lot of trouble when I was a kid, so I try to enforce that now in my children."

At center: James Albert Brantley, Jr. (Pops). Portraits of his eldest son (left) and brother Jay (right) surround it. 

That's clear from the first work to the last, as the artist branches out from members of his own family to the wider world around him. On the gallery’s first floor, viewers meet James Albert Brantley, Jr., Brantley's father and one of his creative inspirations. In the work, the senior Brantley rises against a pink background, stately in a white blazer and blue button-down shirt. Beneath it, his right hand hangs heavy at his side, deep-veined and weathered but still regal, strong. The other slides into a pocket, out of view in a pair of freshly pressed trousers. 

His chin tilts upward, as if he is on the cusp of saying hello. Above it, his lips purse and almost flicker; a smile feels imminent. Sunglasses glint above them, reflecting something in the distance. At his feet, and beyond the canvas, Brantley has built a sort of altar with fresh chrysanthemums and family photos that show a patriarch’s impact. It is one of two family altars in the show, where Brantley weaves a line through generations of men who have helped his creativity bloom. 

“My dad always tells me to shoot for the stars and go for my dreams and goals and everything, and I literally feel like I’m living out a dream for him, because it runs through our blood line,” Brantley said. Because of his dad's struggles with substance use disorder, he added, “he was never really was able to live his dream out.” Now, he has a chance to do so through his son.

While there’s a clear and reverent nod to Amy Sherald—Brantley counts her among his inspirations, along with Kehende Wiley, Mark Bradford, Barkley Hendricks, Kara Walker and New Haven’s own Winfred Rembert and Titus Kaphar—there’s also something entirely of Brantley’s own making. In James Albert Brantley Jr. (Pops), for instance, subjects are much larger than life, allowed and invited to take up space in a world that rarely lets Black men do so. 

Christopher Clark (The Philosopher).

In this way, Brantley strikes up—and pushes—a fresh conversation on Black masculinity, systems and stereotype, and the existence of patriarchy itself. In his 2025 Christopher Clark (The Philosopher), Clark looks out onto the gallery, leaning to the side in a way that says he’s at ease, might even stay a while. To the left of his mouth, he holds up a single finger, as if to show his thinking process in real time. 

The reference is immediate and timeless: Clark is in his everyday clothes—puffy jacket, Yankees baseball cap—but he resembles depictions of Socrates, turning the expectation of who and what can own a pose blessedly on its head (there’s also a nod to Rodin’s Le Penseur, if he lived in New Haven in the present).  

That’s also true upstairs, as the gallery’s two floors create a physical break between family and a mix of imagined, national, and celebrated figures—a sort of human family that Brantley belongs to (and that belongs to him) simply by existing in this time and place. In his 2024 Are We Free, for instance, Brantley pulls a viewer in with an image of a Black man hurtling through space, his arms out in front of him. At the wrists, they stop abruptly: there are just pencil sketches where the hands would otherwise be. 

Are We Free and Together We Stand.

For those with any working knowledge of pop culture, the figure is instantly recognizable as the musician and actor Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover), whose 2018 “This Is America” music video exploded a conversation around race, racism, anti-Black violence, U.S. history and the fickle nature of freedom itself for people who are not white in this country. In the painting, Brantley has captured a moment in which Gambino extends his arms as if to shoot a gun, and the dancers surrounding him run out of the room. Through the canvas, someone can almost hear the squeak of their sneakers and then a sudden, temporary silence. 

In the video, the musician lights a cigarette and takes a beat, perhaps mulling over Brantley’s very question before it’s even been asked. In the painting, the scene is reimagined in long, vivid splatters of color, sprinkled with glitter that makes a viewer come in close and look for a good long while. Like Gambino’s work, it seems, Brantley’s question is rhetorical: he wants his audience to think about it, and come to a conclusion that holds the weight of this moment.  

There’s something of his curiosity and willingness to experiment that permeates the whole show. In his acrylic- and glitter-on-canvas Together We Stand, two boys hold up their fists prepared to box, the image covered with gold and yellow paint that makes it feel divine. In his 2024 Supreme Target, the addition of a basketball hoop in the gallery makes the work feel instantly alive, dynamic, as if Jordan (the stuck-out, ever-taunting tongue is a fun, delicious detail) is still in his prime on the court. 

You Are Loved. 

Or his You Are Loved, in which the word Loved repeats in cursive across the portrait of a bicep-flexing, big-eyed little boy, his face still so young. Around the figure's arms, face and torso, Brantley has folded in a rainbow of bright, candy-colored googly eyes, adding an element of play to an otherwise fierce, almost pugnacious moment. The piece, which rattles gently when it’s touched, was inspired by his children.

The impact is immediate and deep; it disarms the viewer while creating a sense of kinship in brushes and paint alone. After all, how many parents have seen their children make the same stance before bedtime, in their playrooms, or at recess? And when and how, they may ask themselves, was this sweet child ever perceived by the wider world as a threat? 

Let him grow old, Brantley seems to say with the stroke of a brush, and maybe a viewer will remember that Trayvon Martin was supposed to celebrate his 30th birthday earlier this month. Let him grow old.  Close by, that same deep, felt humanity comes through his Baptism, in which two young men look up at the viewer from beneath them, surrounded by a pool of emerald water. 

In this sense, the show feels right on time not just for Black History Month, but also for this moment in U.S. history, in which the federal government has all but announced its latest attempt to further attack, disenfranchise, and erase Black people. In tracing and picturing whole generations, Brantley acknowledges that those efforts are not new—the systems that failed his father still exist today—but they are also not absolute either. To a country trying to scapegoat diversity, he suggests that joy, nuance and contemplation are all possible and necessary.  

Baptism. 

For Brantley, Unveiled Roots also marks the next step in a career dedicated to the city and the people that raised him. Growing up in Newhallville, the artist drew constant inspiration from his brother, Jay, and from his dad, James, both of whom are also self-taught artists (Jay, who runs the business Virtual Lenz, is now a photographer and videographer). At home, he loved to watch Jay as he drafted street scenes, musicians and rappers, comic book characters. When that talent sent him on to classes at Creative Arts Workshop, Brantley took note.  

“He would be coming home with all this pottery and stuff,” he remembered, smiling as he conjured the image of Jay drawing fastidiously in his room. “So I would go to my room, get out comic books, and start practicing.”

By the time Brantley reached the fifth grade, he too had fallen in love with drawing—and his teachers were starting to take note. From Lincoln-Bassett Community School, he followed the arts to Augusta Lewis Troup School, and then to Hyde Leadership School, careful to find the arts educators in every space. He credits Karen Spear Abbruscato, a teacher at Hyde who he thinks of as a creative angel, as especially formative in his development.  

“It was like I was self-taught but always given these key gems to keep going,” he said. At home, he also lived around the corner from the late Winfred Rembert, and attended school with several of his kids. “It kept me out of a lot of trouble.” 

As he got older, his love for art led him to Paier College, where he studied painting but ultimately did not finish a degree-seeking program. Back in his neighborhood, he dedicated his work to breaking down barriers to access, including as a teacher at the nearby Connecticut Center for Arts & Technology (ConnCAT). 

In the show, that love for accessibility is still clear. On any given day, it’s not uncommon to see him sitting in the gallery, working on a painting that is still unfinished (as of late, he’s had his brushes and easel at the ready for Marquis Tyron Brantley Jr. (My First Born), a portrait of his eldest son). He’s also the rare artist who allows people to touch his work, as long as they are gentle. It’s been a hit, he said, with young viewers.

“I’m loving what I’m doing, and if I can inspire someone, and I definitely … I want the work to live on,” he said. “It’s really a blessing.” 

“Stay tapped into who you are,” he later added, as if he was giving advice to viewers. “If not, find out who you are. I’m doing that now. That’s why I’m shedding light on the people in my family, and also that’s why you see my more creative side. You know, I just want to be an inspiration to people.”

Made Visible: Unveiled Roots runs through March 1 at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon Street in New Haven. Listen to an interview with Brantley on WNHH Radio here.