Matheny Arts Access Program: Art Without Limits

Lloyd Decker, Houdini, 2022, Acrylic on canvas board, 16 x 20 inches

The Matheny Arts Access Program empowers artists with disabilities to create art without limits. Regardless of their disabilities, artists are provided with the tools and materials they need to produce masterful works of art that are distinctly their own. Since 1993, Arts Access has developed and refined a specialized communication and choice system that allows highly trained facilitators to provide neutral assistance to participants with physical and developmental disabilities, enabling them to participate fully in artmaking. The countless choices that form a painting, from the size of the canvas, to paint color, to the method of application, are made by the participant. The resulting works of art are born of the imaginations of the Arts Access artists, expressing their unique voices and visions.
This exhibition celebrates artists who continue to create art despite limitations and challenge viewers to change their perspective on the capabilities and talents of people with developmental and physical disabilities. The works in this exhibition are as diverse as the artists themselves – from gestural abstractions to rigid, geometric forms to meditative color studies. The variation in styles and themes represents the individuality of each artist and serves as an example that there is no limit to what an artist can create. This exhibition is a demonstration of the ways that individuals with disabilities make their ideas, imagination, and creativity come to life.