Faith, Art & the Grace of GOD

by Curtis Wilks
(Milwaukee, WI.)

My name is Curtis Wilks, I come from a family that was united as one. My mother and father walk by faith and were filled with the Holy Ghost. They raised me up in the church. One day my mother and father took me to church, I was at the pulpit and my mother laid hands on me and at that point I knew that Jesus' Spirit was real.

But I was “sifted like wheat” Luke 22:31, and fell from grace. I became “entangled with the yolk of bondage” Gal. 5:1. This is my journey of faith & art through the grace of GOD.

I have created more than 150 illustrative scenes from the Bible. I created the paintings, and some 2,000 drawings, while in prison for robbing a bank. In prison for seven years, I found purpose in painting the Bible.

I was dead, I was a dead corpse when I went in there. I was through with it. It was over with. My life was gone. It was then the Spirit dropped inside my body, I was sitting in my cell, and the Spirit dropped inside my body, and I started scribbling on some paper. I began to draw and paint the Bible, illustrating stories from Genesis to Revelation. Driven by desperation, youth, and the stretch of time before me, I created hundreds of drawings and paintings.

“While many inmates create art, few do so with such originality. Like many narrative cycles from the history of art, Wilks’ art covers the usual high points of the Christian Story – but in unexpected, visceral ways.” states Louis Schumacher, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s art and architecture critic.

They called me “preacher man” in prison, my art hung in my cell for everyone to see. I painted the story of Noah, Adam & Eve, Exodus, Ten Commandments, Beatitudes, The Resurrection, and my favorite The Pentecost.

“Cloistered in a cell, Wilks did something he’d never done. He made art – exceptional art. For example, rather than the demure maiden we find in many Renaissance depictions of the Annunciation, when Jesus becomes Mary’s body. In Wilks’ Garden of Eden, the serpent appears like a dark cave burrowed into a turquoise landscape. Giant fish seem to fly above drowning humanity in a painting about The Flood. Figures fill many of Wilks’ paintings like schools of fish, witnesses that flow toward Christ’s empty tomb or ascension.” Lois Schumacher, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s art critic.

If even once, I would like to share my art exhibited all together and in chronological order, so others can view GOD through my faith.

In Jesus name,

Curtis Wilks


For more information please contact:
Curtis Wilks C/O eric@labapollo.com
414-545-1270