One can recognize a painting by the Belfast native Colin Davidson from across the room. His large-scale, up-close portraits are realistic, even though he doesn’t hide the thick, heavy strokes of paint that form these faces. In “Silent Testimony,” the 18 people portrayed in the paintings all experienced loss during the Troubles—a 30-year period of violence in Northern Ireland, commencing in the late 1960s. The exhibition hangs in the Irish Art Center’s theater space, a location that suggests each subject is “telling” his or her own story. On view elsewhere in the building is Davidson’s newly commissioned portrait of Senator George Mitchell—created to honor the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement—and several works depicting Ireland’s cultural heroes and Belfast’s industrial landscapes. —Clara Molot