Perquimans Art League's October Show --- By Colleen Brown

In October, the Gallery of the Perquimans Art League will be
hosting a show by the accomplished artist Lamar Whidbee. A
graduate of North Carolina Central University who lives in the
Raleigh area, Mr. Whidbee is Hertford born and raised.
Perquimans County High School remembers the young artist
with great pride and the Art League is tremendously proud to
celebrate a Hertford man whose success as an artist makes him a role model for all small town
residents with big talent and bigger dreams.
Returning to Hertford, where some of his family still lives, will be a home-coming for Whidbee
and very much in line with the idea of the show, titled “Home Grown.” In his artist’s statement
for his show, Whidbee explains that his work is tied to questions of identity, of history and ancestry.
Objects represented in his paintings have the power to “stimulate memories that provoke the
questions of: Where did I come from? Who are my ancestors?” Images of windows “represent the
act of viewing, a line of sight into the generational cycle.”
Leaving Hertford to pursue his education at Winston-Salem State University, Whidbee had no intention
of pursuing art as a career. It was only after a few years of college and a transfer to NCCU
that, in 2011, he painted his first portrait and “found what would instantly become my passion.
Painting would be the instrument to mold the person that I am today.”
And the person he is today is an artist of great depth and insight, who uses portraiture and the
depiction of everyday objects to explore both his own experience of life and the search for meaning
& identity. He describes his work as “intimate sculpture/painting hybrids that raise questions
pertaining to culture, class and education.”
The exhibit “Home Grown” will be on display in the Perquimans Art League Gallery on Church
Street in downtown Hertford throughout the month of October. Mr. Whidbee will also be the
artist in residence at his old high school, Perquimans County High School, with a scheduled visit
to Perquimans Middle School as well. A reception for the artist will be held at the Gallery on
Sunday, October 9 from 1 to 4 p.m.

By: Colleen Brown
Assistant to the Director
Phone: 252-426-5657
chamber@visitperquimans.com
www.visitperquimans.com
www.facebook.com/perquimanschamber
Twitter @PQChamber

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