Genre Painting is a kind of painting that shows scenes of everyday life. Inclusion is a term used in Special Education for trying to integrate people with special needs in mainstream classrooms and community situations. My Genre of Inclusion project is about including people with special needs in my genre paintings, as naturally as possible, without dramatics or spotlighting. The paintings are not about disability, but just about people, people of all kinds, some of whom have disabilities. The idea for this kind of painting came about because one of my children has autism in a very severe form, which includes mental retardation. My becoming a parent of a child with special needs has made me realize that the boundary between the disabled and the non-disabled is as arbitrary as it is ever-changing. People who differ from "the norm" are everywhere: just not all that often are they seen up on a gallery wall. I feel this lack of portrayal of all kinds of people skews our perspective of what being human encompasses, and so I am working to redress the balance as much as I can. The Genre of Inclusion project has received the Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts (2003), a Valerie Lamb Smith Artist's Residency (2003) and also a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant (2005). It has been the subject of articles in several publications including Mothering Magazine (September 2004), Exceptional Parent Magazine (April 2005) and The Advocate (February 2005). I have been invited to exhibit this work at the Manayunk Art Center (Philadelphia, PA, USA) in June of 2003 and again in April 2006. More exhibits are scheduled for the future. Thank you for your interest in this project. I am very grateful to all who have helped my idea become a reality.Nancy Bea Miller
Some links to the project:Only Human ll exhibit, April 2006, Manayunk Art Center, Philadelphia, PA.
The Leeway Foundation, 2005 Grantees. The Advocate article Mothering Magazine article Exceptional Parent Magazine article The Review article Only Human exhibit, June 2003, Manayunk Art Center, Philadelphia, PA.