By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Artist Robert Shetterly believes Americans need to get angry. Not violent. Just angry.

“People aren’t paying attention,” he said Thursday. The issue may be the environment, global warming, the national debt or the war in Iraq. “They’re just passive.”

But he’s angry. And so are the people he paints.

Shetterly has created a touring collection of portraits, of 90 modern and historical activists, titled “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” They include Rosa Parks, Ralph Nader, Dwight Eisenhower and Walt Whitman.

On Thursday, just hours before the exhibit opened at Lewiston-Auburn College, Shetterly lectured about his paintings at the Great Falls Forum.

The paintings were borne of his anger and grief in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he said. And they changed his art forever.

Shetterly, who lives in Brownsville, made his living painting surreal, dreamlike images. They were subtle and meant to be interpreted differently by everyone who saw them.

But after 9/11, he had trouble continuing.

“I thrashed around a lot and felt more and more irrelevant,” he said.

Then, he painted a portrait of Walt Whitman. When he was through, he etched the canvas with a Whitman quote:

“This is how you shall live in this world.”

It seemed right.

“I hung it up in the house for two days and it felt really good,” Shetterly said.

The anger and sorrow that had built up – hearing the stories of 9/11 victims and watching Bush administration officials make their arguments for going to war – was relieved by the work.

But it came back.

“My wife, Gail, said to me, Paint some more portraits,'” he said.

Shetterly – who resembles a college professor with his soft voice and white hair – began devouring history books, essays and biographies for inspiration. He chose Democrats and Republicans, communists, anarchists and socialists. Each portrait is accompanied by the subject’s own words.

“I do not in any way mean to be partisan,” Shetterly said. “I care nothing for that.”

He chose people who were both honest and seemed to express a truth. And relevance to current problems helped.

“I tried to pick them so they have a punch for this moment,” he said.

It seems to have worked.

The growing exhibit has been shown all over the country, in museums, churches, schools and community centers. It has even been shown in the lobby of a Bangor movie theater.

“I expected to have 50 paintings in my basement and now I have 90 on the road,” he said.

The ambiguity of his former art is gone, he said. The words help give the paintings focus.

“I use a steel needle, like a dental tool, and scratch away the paint,” he said.

Without the words, people might compliment the aesthetics but miss the point, he said.

“Each quote says, You better listen,'” Shetterly said.

It might even make you angry, he said.

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