Solo Exhibition
On Friday, September 12, 2025, Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art will open Charles Zuill: Portals to Another Dimension in the Rick Faries Gallery, a solo exhibition of one of Bermuda’s most visionary and influential artists. Curated by Lisa Howie (Black Pony Gallery), this landmark solo exhibition brings together Zuill’s recent works, a collection that embodies his lifelong devotion to abstract expression and experimentation.
The exhibition will be on view through November 4, with an Artist Talk on October 3 (5:30–7pm).
Curatorial Statement
Defying gravity. Sculpting lines. Making the flat surface dimensional.
These are characteristics found in this recent series of silverpoint drawings on white gesso by local artist, educator, art critic, and cultural visionary Charles Zuill, PhD.
This investigation began while Charles was a graduate student at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the 1960s. He says, “I began a series of paintings based on the grey scale and I continued that series for the next 20 years. Then, in 1989, I branched into another direction, investigating natural forces utilising natural materials, such as sand and soil. It may seem that the 1989 shift was a radical departure from my earlier greyscale investigations, but appearances can be deceptive; it was a continuation of my use of gradients from light to dark.
In my research on light/dark gradients, I read the Elements of Drawing, by the nineteenth-century, English art critic and art theorist, John Ruskin, in which he stated that he could make mud glow, if he were allowed to gradate it. That was a challenge I had to try. So, using Bermuda paleosol, or fossil soil, I began working in that direction, only to return to my earlier interests in tonal gradients, as with metal point and silverpoint drawings in 2020.
As a result of my teaching art history over many years, I had developed an interest in historic materials, such as encaustic and metal point drawings. With the Covid epidemic and lockdown, plus the forced relinquishing of my St. George’s studio, I used the time at home to explore and investigate the use of metal point as a drawing material.”
About Charles Zuill
Born in 1935 and raised on a farm in Bermuda where the roots of his experimental artmaking took hold, Charles Zuill was influenced by local artist Charles Lloyd Tucker and Swiss German artist Paul Klee, amongst others. He later earned a PhD in Art History from New York University. Upon returning to Bermuda, he devoted his passion to nurturing the local arts scene – teaching at Bermuda College, and playing a foundational role in the Bermuda Society of Arts, the Bermuda Arts Council, and the Bermuda National Gallery – institutions that continue to benefit from his dedication. Generations of Bermudian artists have felt the impact of his mentorship and vision.
Exhibition Review
Laura Watts, PhD in Art History, Professor Emeritus, Daemen University
Charles Zuill opens doors at Masterworks, The Royal Gazette (September 20, 2025)