2007 BETHESDA PAINTING AWARDS

BETHESDA PAINTING AWARDS

June 8 - July 11, 2007

A reception for the finalists will be held on Friday, June 8, 6pm - 9pm at the Fraser Gallery Bethesda

Congratulations to the 38 semifinalists who made it thus far, especially to landscape painter Freya Grand, a studio colleague and Paul Ellis for making it to the list of Semi-finalists.

**************************************************************************
This annual competition, sponsored by local arts patron, Carol Trawick, awards $14,000 to artists based in DC, MD and VA. One artist will receive the Grand Prize of $10,000. Paintings by the finalists will be on exhibit at the Fraser Gallery. The 2007 Bethesda Painting Awards will be juried by Dr. Brandon Fortune, Professor W.C. Richardson and Professor Tanja Softic.

Dr. Brandon Brame Fortune is the Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery. She has spent the last three years researching contemporary portraiture, and was the Gallery’s coordinator for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. She graduated from Agnes Scott College, and received her masters and doctorate degrees in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1999, she was co-curator of the exhibition Franklin & His Friends: Portraying the Man of Science in Eighteenth-Century America and author of the accompanying publication.

Professor W.C. Richardson is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Maryland. Richardson received his BFA, with Highest Honors, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned his MFA in Painting from Washington University at St. Louis. His most recent one person shows were at Loyola University, Baltimore, MD, March 2004; Fusebox, Washington, DC, June 2003; Fusebox, Washington, DC, July 2002; Baumgartner Gallery, New York, NY, September 2000. Richardson received Maryland State Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowships in 2002, 1998, 1987 and 1981. He was commissioned by the architectural firm Cesar Pelli and Associates to create painted triptychs for the new North Terminal of Ronald Reagan National Airport.

Professor Tanja Softic is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Richmond. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting in 1988 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking in 1992 at Old Dominion University. Softic was a recipient of the 1996 National Endowment for the Arts/ Southern Arts Federation Visual Artist Fellowship and Soros Foundation—Open Society Institute Exhibition Support Grant in 1997. She recently participated in the 12th International Print Triennial in Cracow, Poland and won a first prize at the The 5th Kochi International Triennial Exhibition of Prints, Ino-cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan in 2002.

Fraser Gallery Bethesda
7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E, Bethesda, Maryland 20814
Tel: (301) 718-9651
Fax: (301) 718-9652
Open Tuesday - Saturday: 11:30am - 6pm
Closed on Sundays and Mondays except by appointment.

Email: info@thefrasergallery.com