When Laura Madeleine, a primarily batik artist and Wyndmoor resident for more than 35 years, was a teenager, a close friend of her family spent a year at her son’s bedside as he lingered after being shot in the head. Madeleine had played with him growing up, but felt much closer to his mother.

“I don’t remember why he was shot; it was either a drive-by or other unfortunate event,” she recalled last week, “but I do remember his mother aging about 10 years that year as she sat by his side in a hospital. The heartbreak was nearly unbearable and the cause of it so, so petty and wasteful.

“Years later I got a call from my son who was in high school. There was a shooter in the school, and he couldn’t find his brother, my other son. My daughter, luckily, was home and rushed with me to the school. It was pandemonium. My older son came running to the car and then turned back, yelling that he needed to find his brother. He ran back into the school! I will never understand why I let him do that. I was kind of frozen. In the end, only one student was killed — the shooter, who took his own life — but no one was unscathed; no one was not traumatized that day.”

“As I hear daily about shootings and get to know the families and friends of victims, I don’t know if I would have the strength to go on,” she added. “The effect of a close call on me was devastating, the thought of losing any of my children unbearable. And yet, this goes on daily across our country. It is shameful, disgusting, disrespectful of human life, and it needs to stop.”

As an artist and “not much of a marcher for causes,” Madeleine decided to do something to stem the tidal wave of gun violence that has been washing over Philadelphia for years.

In fall 2016, The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill was planning its music and arts festival for the coming year. It was to be a program bringing attention to gun violence. They asked Chestnut Hill resident Rebecca Thornburgh and Madeleine to curate the visual arts component that would become a one-month exhibition. By coincidence, Madeleine had been considering an idea for an exhibit of portraits of Philadelphia murder victims for some time.

“I was inspired by the work of Daniel Heyman, a renowned Philadelphia artist,” she told the Local last week. “His work focuses on portraits of those who have been misrepresented by the media or dismissed by the public. I thought if artists could be randomly paired with those who have lost loved ones to gun violence in order to get to know who the person was in life and celebrate that life with a fine arts portrait, it would create a new connection to the issue for the viewers of the portraits.”

Thornburgh and the committee were moved by the idea. They put out a call to artists in the area and with the help of Movita Johnson-Harrell, a member of the nonprofit, Heeding God’s Call to End Gun Violence, they were able to find families who have lost loved ones to gun violence and were willing to meet with the artists to have the portraits painted. With the success of that first exhibit, Madeleine lobbied to take it on the road. Ever since then, their annual “Souls Shot Portrait Project” exhibit travels for an entire year to houses of worship, libraries, community centers, health centers, hospitals, universities, art galleries and museums, and even Philadelphia City Hall. They currently have one exhibition each in the State Capitol in Harrisburg, the State Library in Harrisburg, and recently at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. “Some artists become quite close with the families,” Madeleine said.

Since the project began, about 190 artists, some of whom have painted more than one portrait, have painted about 300 individuals. Participation is free, and each person receives a free copy of the full color catalog of images painted. Over the years, Souls Shot has been featured on all local TV stations, including a video filmed at an exhibit at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Chestnut Hill. One CBS-TV reporter and videographer, Brad Nau, won an Emmy for his presentation.

Emily Johnson, a mother whose late son was portrayed in a Souls Shot exhibit at Congregation Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley in 2023, said in a 6ABC feature at the time, “On July 21, 2021, I lost my best friend, my everything, and he wasn’t just a number. His name was Kaylin Johnson, and he was 16 years old. If you knew KJ, you loved KJ. He never left you without saying, ‘I love you.’ … To walk in here and actually see his portrait hanging on a wall behind me is a breathtaking moment,” she said of the painting by artist Cathleen Cohen.

“I hope these portraits will cause people who see them to see the issue of gun violence in a new light,” Madeleine told the Local, “to consider the root causes, the human costs, the heartbreaking reasons for the shootings …and to memorialize and celebrate the life of the person.”

Anna Kocher, a participating artist and board member, told us, “Our exhibitions are an invitational, not confrontational, approach to the issue of gun violence. They move people to a place of empathy where true change can take place.”

Madeleine is now board president of the Souls Shot Portrait Project. Germantown resident Aubrey Fink is the new executive director. JoAnn Miles Miller, widow of artist Gary Miller, formerly of Chestnut Hill, is the board member who was responsible for helping the project become a nonprofit corporation.

The Souls Shot portraits are currently on exhibit at Haverford Friends Meeting, 855 Buck Lane, Haverford. For more information, visit soulsshotportraitproject.org. Len Lear can be reached at Lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.