Megan Hepburn, Studio Arts Painting and Drawing MFA student, has won the prestigious
Joseph Plaskett Award.
The award recipient was announced at the 130th anniversary of the
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts at the Château Frontenac in Quebec City with her Excellency, the Governor General, present. 92-year-old painter Joseph Plaskett, for whom the award is named, was also in attendance to give the $25,000 award to Hepburn.
Megan Hepburn, who earned a BFA from Emily Carr University in Vancouver in 2005, will receive her MFA from Concordia at the Fall 2010 convocation ceremony. At Concordia, she was also awarded the Velan Graduate Entrance Bursary in Painting and Drawing in 2008. Hepburn is a member of the Montreal Committee for Reading Texts and Objects and was a participant in the international residency at the Banff Centre for the
Arts: Why Are Conceptual Artists Painting Again? Because They Think It's a Good Idea, led by Jan Verwoert in 2009. Selected exhibitions include Stride Gallery in Calgary and Art Mur and The Basement Gallery in Montreal. Her first solo exhibition took place at Galerie Werner Whitman in Montreal in 2009. She plans to travel to Denmark to begin her Plaskett year.
Joseph Plaskett is a British-based and Canadian-born painter who lived in Paris for many years. He established his foundation and the Joseph Plaskett Award in 2004 to facilitate his vision of supporting an outstanding Canadian graduate student or recent MFA graduate in the discipline of painting to travel, make art, or study in Europe for one year. Since 2009, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) has partnered with the Joseph Plaskett Foundation to give expertise and to administer the award process, which is coordinated by artist and Emily Carr Professor Landon Mackenzie for the RCA Governing Council and the Plaskett Foundation. The Joseph Plaskett Prize recipient is chosen by a jury. This year's jury members were Eliza Griffiths, Pierre Dorion and Etienne Zack.
Updated on June 7, 2010
