BROOKE STEWART:
Hail Mary

The debut of Brooke Stewart: Hail Mary (June 2025) coincides with a pivotal milestone: twenty- nine years since the founding of the WNBA. In the past year, women’s basketball finally began to garner wide-spread, public support with a record-breaking 170% increase in overall viewership. Though these athletes are still pushing for equality in coverage and compensation, one truth remains unchanged: greatness is not built on spectatorship, but on consistency, repetition and focus.

For Stewart, a former Division 1 guard, the court is more than a physical space; it is a sacred site layered with memory, movement, and reverence. Stewart is deeply familiar with what it means to have a home court and to participate in the quiet rituals of play. In Hail Mary, she presents a series of aerial-view paintings that map the energy and quiet rituals embedded in every corner of the court. Much like the painstakingly hand-drawn lines, every dribble becomes a meditation. The steady rhythm of drills, the echo of bouncing balls, and the choreographies of gameplay cultivate mindfulness, discipline, and collective spirit.

Drawing from her Catholic upbringing and the traditions of altarpiece painting, Stewart elevates sport into a form of worship. In Communion, circles merge, lines blur and borders overlap, mimicking the exchange and convergence of spiritual experience and sacrament. Overtime, The Resurrection, shows a golden orb hovering above center court, an opportunity for each team to reach salvation before the final buzzer.

There’s a prayerful stillness that emerges through repetition– a muscle memory that drifts into a flow-state. This exists within the practice of painting, the practice of religion, and the practice of sport, and Stewart honors them all with each mindful stroke. In these courts, the devout fans are left off of the picture plane; instead, she offers reverence to the ritual itself.