Paintings by Artists with Disabilities are on Display

Josh Handler’s painting, “Peach Cobbler Versus Bee”, is based on a summer picnic. It’s a battle between bees, attracted to a delicious peach cobbler at the bottom of a picnic basket, and human picnickers. Another painting, “Odd-Shaped Flowers”, is about Handler’s vision of a Venus flytrap.

LD, also known as Lloyd, is an artist who enjoys experimenting with textures and various types of splatter. He often applies the splatter to his paintings while other areas of his canvas are still wet, resulting in a textural blending of paint.

Josh and Lloyd are two of 21 artists from the Matheny Medical and Educational Center’s Arts Access Program whose paintings are on display at the 12th annual Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) Collaborative ARTS Exhibit. The virtual and in-person galleries for the exhibit opened June 23 and will be visible through August 31. NJMS is located at 185 South Orange Ave. in Newark. A Virtual Artists Reception will be held from 6-7 p.m. on Monday, July 18. Admission to this event is free. To register or to view the virtual exhibit, log onto www.artsaccessprogram.org.

Matheny, based in Peapack, NJ, is a special hospital and educational facility for children and adults with medically complex developmental disabilities. Arts Access provides individuals with disabilities the freedom to create in the visual, literary, and performing arts. The NJMS exhibit will also feature artwork from artists participating in the Jewish Service for Developmentally Disabled’s WAE Center in West Orange. The WAE Center is a holistic, creative, and expressive arts learning center for people with intellectual disabilities.

Arts Access and the JSDD’s WAE Center are dedicated to enabling individuals with disabilities to create fine art. The artistic process is an undeniable source of empowerment for people with disabilities, and the work included in this annual exhibition is a testament to the success of each of these programs.

Handler, who lives in Matheny’s group residence in Frelinghuysen, NJ, has been creating paintings and digital art since the Arts Access Program’s beginning in 1993. He tries to make his visual art “unique and interesting. Some people think I’m mysterious.” His “Venus Fly Trap” painting is “what I think Venus fly traps look like in my artistic mind – in Joshua Handler’s world. I had a dream about odd-shaped flowers one day. That is how ‘Odd-Shaped Flowers’ came to be.”

Lloyd, who lives in Columbia, NJ, works closely at Arts Access with professional artist Joe Matousek, who is his facilitator. When Lloyd creates a painting, Matousek says, “he explores various mediums at the same time, such as using crayons in paint or mixing markers with paint splatter, just to see how they react to one another. He is an artist who knows exactly what he wants and always puts a little adventure into every painting.” Lloyd’s two acrylic paintings at the NJMS exhibit are entitled “Yellow” and “Colors”.

Among other Arts Access artists with multiple paintings at the NJMS exhibit are Cheryl Chapin, who lives in Matheny’s Basking Ridge group residence, and Chet Cheesman and Ellen Kane who reside at Matheny’s Franklin Twp. group homes. Chapin’s visual art has been exhibited at Overlook Hospital’s Wallace Art Gallery in Summit, the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton; and the Johnson & Johnson headquarters in New Brunswick. Her NJMS paintings are “Splatter and Drip” and “A River Runs Through It”.

Cheesman, whose work has been shown at ABC Headquarters and the Grounds for Sculpture, says, “All of my paintings are in my head before I do them.” One of his pieces at NJMS is untitled; the other is called “Amber My Sister”. Both of Kane’s painting are untitled. She describes her work as “stylish and dramatic and original,” but, above all else, painting, she says, “makes me happy.”

Anyone interested in purchasing artwork from Arts Access, should email julia@artsaccessprogram.org. To purchase artwork from the WAE Center, email monica@jsdd.org .