Howard Payne University student Haleigh Clevenger concluded her undergraduate studies in 2022 with an exhibition of drawings and paintings focused on faces, body language and spiritual experience.
Presented at the Dorothy and Wendell Mayes Art Gallery in Brownwood, Texas, the exhibition brought together work developed during Clevenger’s studies in English and studio art.
The body as a site of expression
Clevenger used faces and physical gesture to examine the relationship between inner experience and visible form. Her work was inspired by the Book of Hebrews and its treatment of the difficult union between spiritual and bodily life.
This source shaped the exhibition without reducing the paintings and drawings to direct religious illustration. Instead, expression, posture and human presence became ways of considering weariness, comfort and the experience of being understood.
A record of artistic development
The exhibition also marked the completion of several years of technical and thematic study. Art faculty member Julie Mize had taught Clevenger from her first year through her final year and observed her growing ability to develop a subject across several works and media.
Clevenger described the presentation as an opportunity to share her work with the community that had supported her education. The gallery therefore served both as a final academic assessment and as a public statement of an emerging practice.
By concentrating on a coherent group of drawings and paintings rather than a broad survey of assignments, the exhibition showed how sustained attention to a theme could connect formal development with personal belief.
The result was a senior exhibition organised around human presence, using faces and body language to make questions of spirit, vulnerability and consolation visible.