When Jason Osborne looked through his junk mail, he expected the letter to be a rejection. Instead, he found that he was awarded a prestigious fellowship.
Osborne, a second-year UNC MFA student, won a $20,000 painting fellowship from the Dedalus Foundation.
The Master of Fine Arts Fellowships are given to only two students, in painting or sculpture. Candidates must be nominated by their MFA programs and are chosen by a panel from the Dedalus Foundation.
Founded by artist Robert Motherwell, the Dedalus Foundation is a national organization that seeks to promote the public understanding of modern art through practice and research.
Osborne’s adviser, elin o’hara slavick, said that the award is one of the most prestigious in the world, and that it could bring him various opportunities in the New York art world and beyond.
“Simultaneously humorous and pathetically lonely, Osborne’s painted protagonists invite us into a world of serious whimsy,” she praised. “Osborne revels in the simplicity of color and shape, materiality and process, form and function, embracing and refusing the accepted codes of canonical paintings.”
He plans to use the money for studio space in Durham or New York City.
Osborne’s work was also recently featured in Carolina Creates Visual Arts’ exhibition, “Don’t Be Intimated By This Painting.”
