Chubb Fellowship
Laura Romaine
MFA 2022, Chubb Fellow 2024
Each year, the Academy selects three outstanding graduates to serve as postgraduate fellows as part of the Chubb Postgraduate Fellowship.
Beginning in 2027, we will offer two (2) of the three (3) fellowship positions to alumni who have been out of school for at least one academic year. Additionally, we are exploring the possibility of making all fellowship positions available to alumni in the future. As an Academy graduate, you remain eligible for a fellowship throughout your career, and we are committed to expanding postgraduate opportunities for you in the years to come.
The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies is the title sponsor of the program. The Chubb post graduate fellowship is the highest honor the Academy can bestow on its graduates. Under the program, the fellows have the opportunity to expand the breadth and depth of their artistic prowess while serving as teaching assistants and mentors to a new crop of talented figurative artists. Chubb fellows also receive studio accommodations, exhibition opportunities and a stipend. Fellowship Responsibilities
Current Fellows
2025-2026 Fellow
Korbyn Carleton
Korbyn Carleton (b. 1997, Maryland) is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in Special Effects Makeup, whose current work focuses on modern women’s lack of body literacy and the effects that come from our divorce from the natural rhythms of life. She completed the Certificate of Fine Arts at the New York Academy of Art in 2019 and graduated with the Masters of Fine Arts from the Academy in 2024. While at the Academy, Carleton received the Martha and Walter Erlebacher Award, the Jeannie Rose & John L. Weinberg Scholarship, Exhibitions Scholarship, and the Sculpture Scholar Award.Carleton was awarded the Newington Cropsey Foundation Fellowship for 2023-2024. She will be exhibiting her work in the group show Figurativas at MEAM in Barcelona, Spain later this fall.
2025-2026 Fellow
Sierra Merda
Sierra Merda (b. 1991, Lithuania) is a painter and draftsperson currently based in New York City. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with showcases in the UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and across the United States.
Rooted in London’s feminist punk, DIY, and underground scenes, she earned her B.A. in Painting & Drawing from the University of Northampton in 2013 and was awarded her M.F.A. in Painting (Anatomy Track) from the New York Academy of Art in 2025, where she received the Martha & Walter Erlebacher Award and the Chubb Fellowship (2025–2026). She was the recipient of the 2017 Arts Council UK Arts Grant for Artists and has been featured in Forum Gallery, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, and Fulham Town Hall. Her work reinterprets classical ideals through a feminist lens, merging and subverting historical iconography with the emotional realities of contemporary life.
2025-2026 Fellow
Andrea Olivia
Andrea Olivia (b. 1991, New Jersey) is an oil painter with a background in illustration. She completed the Certificate of Fine Arts at the New York Academy of Art in 2023 and graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts from the Academy in 2025. Her work explores themes of identity, African American culture, and the Black transgender experience, often drawing from childhood, music, and storytelling traditions. Olivia’s work has been exhibited throughout NYC and in Denmark at the Art Herning Art Fair in Copenhagen and Forum Gallery, The Living Gallery, and Sotheby’s in New York.
Previous Fellows
2024-2025
Fellows
Manuela Caicedo (b. 1993, Bogotá, Colombia) earned her degree in Visual Arts from La Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in 2022, where she received a meritorious thesis award for her debut film Les dejé fresas en mi bolsillo mientras llega el día en que se apaguen los soles (I Left Strawberries in My Pocket Until the Day the Suns Go Out), an interdisciplinary work incorporating painting, drawing, and performance. In 2024, Caicedo completed her MFA in Painting at the New York Academy of Art, where she was supported by the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Grant and honored with the Academy Scholar Award. Following her graduation, Caicedo was awarded the 2025 Chubb Fellowship. In summer of 2024, she participated in an artist residency at the University of Notre Dame in Kylemore, Ireland.
Benjamin Staker (b. 1994, Washington) received his BA in art history and interdisciplinary visual arts at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2015. In 2024, he completed his MFA from the New York Academy of Art where he was awarded the 2025 Chubb Fellowship. Staker has also been selected for residencies at Byrdcliffe in Woodstock (June 2024) and the Kylemore Notre Dame Global Centre in Ireland (July 2024). His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Ethan Cohen Gallery and George Adams Gallery.
A Deep Booming Echo in My Painfully Hollow Chest
2024, oil stick on Yupo mounted to panel, 60 x 40 inches
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2023-2024
Fellows
Claudio Cecchetti (b. 1976, Florence, Italy) is an artist based in New York City. In 2004, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Art of Florence, and he earned his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2023. Cecchetti won the Prize of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Venice Biennale.
Jane Philips (b. 1992, Alabama) is a painter based in Brooklyn. Using imagery familiar to her childhood on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Phillips connects nature to anxiety and the inner life. She earned her BFA at Maryland Institute College of Art and Design in 2014 and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2023. Philips won Best in show at Carnegie Visual Art’s Embracing Art 2019, the 2017 People’s Choice Award at the Red Clay Survey at the Huntsville Museum of Art, and the 2016 People’s Choice Award at the Wiregrass Museum of Art’s B16 Wiregrass Biennial.
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2022-2023
Fellows
Zachary Lank (b. 1989, Maryland) is living and working in New York City. In 2012 he received his BFA from Pratt Institute and earned his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2018. While at the Academy, he was awarded the Presidential Merit Scholarship for both years of study, as well as the Terra Foundation’s Giverny Summer Residency, the Altos de Chavon teaching Residency, two Pedagogical Excellence Scholarships. Since then, he has shown in art fairs including the 2021 SPRING/BREAK Art Show, where he co-curated an independent booth, as well as multiple group shows. In 2022, he had his first solo exhibition, “The New Doctrine,” with Hawk and Hive Gallery in Andes, NY. His work has been featured in Art Maze Magazine and Upstate Arts Weekend. Lank is the first New York Academy of Art Chubb Fellowship recipient that is part of a new initiative that opens up the Chubb Fellowship application to all Academy alumni.
Antoinette “Annie” Legnini (b. 1994, The Bronx, New York) is a painter and draftsperson working with mixed media, collage, assemblage, and installation. She received a BA from Fordham University in Visual Arts and Women’s Studies in 2016 and an MFA in Painting at the New York Academy of Art in 2022. Legnini has participated in residencies at the BX Arts Factory, Otis College of Art and Design, and Con Artist Collective. She is a two-time recipient of the Bronx Recognizes Its Own Award from Bronx Council on the Arts. Legnini had a recent solo exhibition “Bronx Faces” at Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education in 2022 and is part of the group exhibition “Order/Reorder” at the Hudson River Museum through September 2023.
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2021-2022
Fellows
Hannah Murray (b. 1994, United Kingdom) is a painter from London. She received a B.A. in Fine Art from Leeds Beckett University in 2015, a Certificate in Interior Design from the KLC School of Design and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Secondary Education from University College London. In the UK, she has exhibited multiple times with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, as well as at the Tate Modern. Her awards include the Young Artist Award from the National Open Art Competition and First Prize in the Portrait Category of the annual painting competition of Artist Magazine. At the New York Academy of Art, where she received an MFA in Painting in 2021, she was awarded the Academy Summer Residency in Leipzig, Germany and an Elizabeth Greenshields Grant, and was named an “Artist to Watch” by Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine.
Wilba Simson (b. 1990, Australia) is an Australian painter, draftsman, video artist and sculptor. In 2013 he received a B.A. in Communication and Design from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, where he received the KW Doggett Prize for best folio and HardiGrant Publication Award. After graduation, he worked as a graphic designer and participated in the Summer Undergraduate Residency Program at the New York Academy of Art, which he then attended for his MFA. At the Academy, where he received an MFA in painting in 2021, he was an Academy Scholar and received an Academy Trustee Scholarship.
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2020-2021
Fellows
Lydia Baker (b. 1990, Virginia) is a draftswoman, printmaker and painter. Baker received a BFA in Communication Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013 and an MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2020. She is the recipient of an IEA Art Heals Grant, an Artist Teaching Residency at the Grier School and a Women’s Artist Residency for Transcendental Awareness in Seneca Forest, WV. She has exhibited her work in New York, Virginia and Copenhagen. Baker’s work has been featured in Juxtapoz Magazine.
Maud Madsen (b. 1993, Canada) received a BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta in 2016 and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2020. She is a two-time recipient of an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and was also awarded an Edmonton Arts Council Travel Grant and the Kylemore Abbey Artist Residency in Kylemore, Ireland. Her work has been featured in Juxtapoz Magazine and Cool Hunting.
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2019-2020
Fellows
Trey Abdella (b. 1994, Virginia) is a painter. He received a BFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in 2016 and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2019. At the New York Academy of Art, he was awarded the Leipzig Summer Residency, the Jane & Jimmy Buffet Scholarship and the President’s Scholarship. He has exhibited in group shows at galleries in New York, Berlin, Seattle and PULSE Miami Beach, and has been featured in Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose Magazine and Artnet News. He will be featured in a group show in Copenhagen in the summer of 2019.
Chloe Chiasson (b. 1993, Texas) is a painter, sculptor and animator. She received a BS in Health Promotion and Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2019. At the Academy, she was awarded the Buddy Taub Scholarship and the Mexico City Summer Residency. She has exhibited in group shows in two New York galleries and her work has been featured in New American Paintings. She will be featured in a group show in Copenhagen in the summer of 2019.
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2018-2019
Fellows
Shiqing Deng (b. 1994, China) is a Chinese painter. She is a graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where she won multiple student awards, and received an MFA at the New York Academy of Fine Art, where she was awarded the Terra Foundation Artist Residency in Giverny, France. In 2016, she won first prize in the Art Renewal Center’s International Salon art competition. Her work has been exhibited at the National Museum of China in Beijing, Da Fen Art Museum in Shenzen, and at the United Nations in New York, as well as in group shows in New York, Cincinnati and Philadelphia.
Erin Pollock (b. 1982, Alaska) is an American painter, photographer and animator. She is a graduate of Whitman College and did postgraduate art studies at Gage Academy in Seattle and Studio Art Centers International in Florence before receiving an MFA at the New York Academy of Art. At the Academy, she was awarded the Will Cotton Grant and the Beijing Summer Residency in Beijing, China. She has staged numerous public art projects, including commissions for the City of Seattle, the City of Anchorage, Seattle Public Transit system, Seattle Art Museum, Ford Motor Company and Microsoft. She has exhibited in group shows in New York, Florence and Beijing and had solo exhibitions in Seattle and Anchorage, and is a recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and a Robert Maxwell Foundation Fellowship.
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2017-2018
Fellows
Eleni Giannopoulou (b. 1994, Greece) is a Greek sculptor and installation artist. A native of Thessaloniki, she trained at the Florence Academy of Art and Angel Academy of Art in Italy before receiving an MFA at the New York Academy of Art. In 2014, she won first prize in the Art Renewal Center International Scholarship competition. She is a three-time recipient of the Elisabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and a recipient of the Panepinto Family Foundation Scholarship and the David Kratz and Gregory Unis Scholarship. She has exhibited in Florence, Toronto and New York. Her work incorporates painting, wax sculpture, woodcarving, light art, and found objects.
Danica Lundy (b. 1991, Canada) is a painter and draughtswoman from British Columbia, Canada. She holds a bachelors degree in Painting and Printmaking from Mount Allison University and received an MFA with a concentration in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. She is the recipient of a British Columbia Arts Council Scholarship, the Eileen Guggenheim and Russell Wilkinson Scholarship, and the New York Academy of Art Leipzig Residency in Leipzig, Germany. She is also a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. She has exhibited in group and solo shows in Leipzig, Vancouver, California, and New York. In spring of 2018, Danica will have a solo show at C+N Canepaneri Gallery in Milan, Italy.
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2016-2017
Fellows
Benjamin Craig (b. 1989, Texas) grew up in rural Illinois and graduated with a degree in illustration from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. At the New York Academy of Art he concentrated in painting and was awarded the Eileen Guggenheim and Russell Wilkinson Scholarship, the Beijing Summer Residency and the Altos de Chavon Teaching Residency in the Dominican Republic. He has exhibited in group shows in San Francisco, Beijing, New York, and Brooklyn.
Valérie Gilbert (b. 1987, Haiti) is a Haitian-Canadian painter and draughtsman. She holds a degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal. At the New York Academy of Art, she concentrated in drawing and was awarded the Leipzig Summer Residency and Elizabeth Greenshields Grant. She has exhibited in group shows in New York and been the subject of a solo exhibition in Montreal. After completing the Chubb Fellowship program, she plans to enroll in a doctoral program in global historic artistic techniques.
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2015-2016
Fellows
Kathryn Goshorn was born in Greenwich, CT and raised in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA. She received her BFA from the University of Georgia in 2013. Goshorn moved to New York to attend the New York Academy of Art and received her MFA in painting in 2015. While at the Academy, Goshorn was awarded the Séan McCarthy Portrait Scholarship, the Academy Art Merit Scholarship, the LCU Scholarship for Women’s Education, and most recently the Chubb Post-graduate Fellowship.
Esteban Ocampo was born in Manizales, Colombia in 1987. Ocampo studied Visual Arts at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota. In 2012, he was awarded 2nd prize in the first National Faber-Castel Drawing contest. He enrolled at the New York Academy of Art in 2013, and was awarded a summer residency to Leipzig, Germany after his first year of study. Upon graduation in 2015, he was awarded a Chubb Post-graduate Fellowship. Ocampo received a Boris Lurie Art Foundation Scholarship for study with the National Academy in Italy during the summer of 2015.
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2014-2015
Fellows
Alonsa Guevara (1986) was born in Rancagua, Chile. She spent 7 years of her childhood living in the Ecuadorian jungle with her family, growing up surrounded by magnificent landscapes and magical environments, and developing a love for light, nature and color. She is a visual artist that works primarily with oil paint. Her paintings are in between two worlds: fantastical and believable, always full of detail and brightness that illustrate an obsession with realism and mimesis.
Alonsa received her BFA from the Pontific Catholic University of Chile in 2009 where she was awarded the MINEDUC scholarship and the Scholarship of Honor. In 2012 she enrolled in the MFA program at the New York Academy of Art, where she was awarded the Terra Foundation Residency in Giverny, France, the Michele and Timothy Barakett Scholarship, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant. She graduated in 2014 and was awarded the 2015 Academy Fellowship annual residency program. She currently lives and works in New York City.
Stephen Vollo was born in Rochester, NY, in 1988. He grew up in the suburb of Webster and earned a degree in Studio Art from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 2010. He moved to New York City in 2013 to attend the New York Academy of Art, where he received his MFA in Painting. Since then, he has been awarded the David Kratz and Gregory Unis Scholarship, a residency at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny, France, and most recently the New York Academy of Art Post-Graduate Fellowship.
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2013-2014
Fellows
Elizabeth Glaessner was born in Palo Alto, California in 1984 and grew up in Houston, Texas. After receiving her BA from Trinity University in 2006, she moved to New York and completed her MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2013. She was awarded a postgraduate fellowship at the New York Academy of Art in 2013, a residency at GlogauAIR Berlin in 2013 and a residency at the Leipzig International Art Programme in 2012. She had her first solo exhibition in New York at P.P.O.W. Gallery and has been included in group exhibitions at Louis B. James, Sargent’s Daughters and Studio 301 in New York as well as Texas and Germany. Glaessner has recently been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Interview Magazine, the Huffington Post, Berlin ArtParasites and LUUPS Munich and Leipzig.
Originally from South Korea, Yunsung Jang studied Fine Art at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He moved to New York City in 2011 to attend the New York Academy of Art where he completed his MFA in drawing. He was awarded a Postgraduate Fellowship at the New York Academy of Art in 2013. His work was selected for the BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. He has also exhibited at Kraine Gallery, NY; Art Southampton, NY; Flowers Gallery, NY; Waterhouse Gallery, CA, and Woeske Gallery, Berlin. He has been featured in International Artist Magazine, The Figure: Painting Drawing and Sculpture, and Strokes of Genius 4: The Best of Drawing.
My work is about the reconstruction of memories, built both internally and externally. Internally the work is made from my memory of the subject, the emotion of experience, and through reflection of myself. Because of the constraints of time and space, I can only access one segment of another person, one version of their personality, one environment of their life. These fragments build my experience and memory of a subject. The external construction is more about the expression of presence through physicality, mass, and form. I am interested in how a picture can replicate a living being, interpreting the subject’s internal and external qualities in communion with my own. My goal is that this composite becomes a new creation, a new creature. The paintings in this exhibition signify not only my friends, but the uniqueness of my experience of them, and the time and space that we shared in the past.
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2012-2013
Fellows
Jonathan Beer is a New York-based artist and writer. Beer was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1988 and received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2010 and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2012. He was awarded a 3rd Year Post Graduate Fellowship at the New York Academy of Art in 2012. Beer has had solo shows at Kathleen Cullen Fine Art in New York, Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center for the Arts in Atlanta, and at Albany Molecular Corporation and Bethlehem Public Library, both in Albany NY. His work has been exhibited internationally at Galerie Delta in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and at the Siauliai Art Gallery in Siauliai, Lithuania. His group exhibitions include shows at Sotheby’s, Sloan Fine Art, Boltax Gallery, Flowers Gallery, and Theaterlab, all in New York.
Born in 1986, Aleah Chapin grew up on an island north of Seattle. After receiving her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2009 she moved to NYC to complete her MFA. Since then, Aleah attended a residency at the Leipzig International Art Programme in Germany and in the fall of 2013 she will be a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Aleah has been the recipient of several awards including the Posey Foundation Scholarship and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. Most recently she won first place in the BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. She has exhibited her work in the US, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. Though Aleah currently lives and works in New York City, the place and people of her childhood are the subjects of her work. It is through this personal lens that she aims to discover stories that are beyond her own experience.
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2011-2012
Fellows
Born and raised in Northern California, Emily Davis Adams studied art at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco City College. She earned a BS in Environmental Policy from UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources and lived in the Southwest before moving to New York City. The art she encountered in the desert, from earthworks to Minimalist painting, has continued to influence her own work, which examines particular locations in the country through detailed representation of infrastructural elements, formalist statements of color and light, and the way in which the two interact to give the sense of familiarity and place.
A Rockland County, New York native, Ian Healy graduated with a degree in Marketing from Pace University. Ian’s initial interest in art brought him to a local tattoo shop where artist JR Maloney took Ian in as a drawing student. Later on Ian was introduced to former New York Academy of Art faculty Hong Nian Zhang and Louis Woolley. Both had a strong impact on Ian’s Growth as an artist. Ian was encouraged to develop his skills and talents in graduate school, being pushed to apply at the New York Academy.
Ian’s interest in “raw animals and dead meat” emerged during a residency in Giverny between his first and second year of graduate study. There he witnessed “life turning to death” in the butcher shops and open-air markets of the region. He returned to New York with an intense interest in death, decay, and the decomposition of life, a perspective you can see in his current fellowship work.
“Ian’s paintings are a process of intimate contemplation and investigation. The disturbing expression in these pieces derives in part from his honesty in the experience and representation. These paintings are about food and life, how we deal with and deny the physical substance of being.”
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2010-2011
Fellows
Born in Belarus and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, Maya received Bachelors degrees in painting and philosophy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2008 before attending the Academy. Her paintings are inspired by notions concerning the connection between past and present and how one’s memory of the past is formed and changed visually. She hopes to allow viewers a glimpse into her personal vision and depict that which she considers ephemeral and therefore precious. By depicting the specific form of her personal experience, she hopes to protect it from the obscuring effects of time, as well as to imply the existence of something that transcends the particular forms of her subjective reality.
From Columbus, OH, O’Reilly received a BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design. After a year of attending New York Academy of Art, he was awarded the Leipzig International Program in 2009 and exhibited internationally there. John has exhibited in group shows at galleries including Danese in Chelsea NYC. O’Reilly’s work focuses on universal parallels. His work explores a wide range of issues from comparative vertebrate anatomy to sociology, psychology, genealogy and familial development. Through the manifestation of drawing and sculpture, his work asks theviewer questions of perception in how we as human beings relate to one another.
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2009-2010
Fellows
Peter Simon Mühlhäußer was raised in Southern Germany in a small town near Stuttgart. In 2003, he completed courses at the Technisches Gymnasium BSZ Öde Göppingen. From 2004 to 2007, the artist studied at the Johannes Steinhäuser in Lasa, South Tirol, Italy, where his practice in “lasa-marble” earned him degrees for both Stonemason and Stonecarver. In May 2009, Mühlhäußer received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art, graduating cum laude and earning the Walter Erlebacher Award for excellence in anatomy, in addition to the Postgraduate Fellowship.
Panni Malekzadeh was born 1984 in Los Angeles, California. Her work has always been about things in herself that she feels incredibly uncomfortable with and embarrassed by. She explores the vulnerability, shame and isolation of the adolescent girl in herself and ones around her. She exploits what’s dangerous and what scares her about herself. She collects, she hoards, her work has some kind of delicate profanity, and a certain over-passivity… including a jade dildo, this beautiful new pearl cock ring… and butterflies and kittens too of course. She currently lives and works in New York City.
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2008-2009
Fellows
From Lancaster, PA, Miller received his BA from Messiah College before attending the Academy. He has been actively showing for the last two years in New York, and worked as assistant to the director at Pocket Utopia, a project space in Brooklyn. He also works part time for the Judd Foundation and teaches a CE course at the Academy. In his work, Miller channels the theatrical pretense of portraiture through a provincial American painting sensibility. His figures direct their deadpan gaze at the picture plane, the site of the methodological drama, where the portrait’s shallow space and the panel’s surface break into dialectical interplay.
From Kingston Jamaica, Phillip Thomas received his BFA in 2003 from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where he was awarded the Albert Huie award for painting. He has been involved in numerous group shows, including the 2008 Jamaica National Biennale, where he received the Aaron Matalan award. For education he was given grants from CHASE and the Cobb Family Foundation. In his work Phillip intends to manufacture cultural reliquaries of the Caribbean and the wider “new world”, using mediums and other agents of the old world.
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