Picture Perfect

Picture Perfect features works by artists utilizing photography as a starting point and visual reference in their artmaking processes. As a group show featuring artists with and without disabilities, Picture Perfect exhibits final artworks alongside the artists’ initial photographic inspiration, demonstrating the ways in which artists of all disciplines and abilities often rely upon photography to strengthen and deepen their creative processes. 

Multimedia artist and sculptor Brian Dooley depicts images from found, online sources, using non-traditional materials such as Perler Beads and Shrinky Dinks. Painter Ross Bicknaver creates hyperrealistic landscapes from photographs he takes on his smartphone. Antonio Adams poses and photographs friends and mentors, to be subsequently recreated as painted portraits. DC-based artist Charmaine Jones draws portraits of her family directly from their Instagram posts. Painter and photographer Toni Lane paints directly on top of family photographs. All of these artists work specifically with photography as their inspirational source: snapshots capturing lived experiences, sublime landscapes, friends and family members, or simply beloved objects, which become the springboard for art-making, allowing the artist a reference point for their ongoing creative practice.

Artists: Antonio Adams, Ross Bicknaver, Duane Blacksheare-Staton, Rosalind Bush, Curtis Davis, Brian Dooley, William Howell, Charmaine Jones, Toni Lane, Joel Martinez, Imani Turner