Bethesda Painting Awards Jury

The 2019 competition will be juried by Kyle Hackett, Sue Johnson and Susan Zurbrigg.

Kyle Hackett
Professor of Studio Art, American University
2014 Bethesda Painting Awards Winner

Kyle Hackett is a Visual Artist based in Washington, D.C. and Professorial Lecturer in Studio Art at American University. Hackett has received numerous honors and awards, including Best in Show at the 2014 Bethesda Painting Awards Exhibition and Best in Show at the 2015 Regional Juried Biennial at Rehoboth Arts League. His work has been featured in New American Paintings, The Washington Post, and was included as "Ten Memorable Paintings of 2014" in the Huffington Post. He was also a semifinalist for the 2016 BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Hackett has exhibited work in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Florida (Miami Art Fair), Washington, D.C. and New York. Hackett has completed residencies at The League Residency in NY as recipient of the Ruth Katzman Scholarship, Contemporary Artists Center, NY and Vermont Studio Center, where he was the recipient of the Civil Society Institute Fellowship. He earned his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the Hoffberger School of Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art and his Bachelor of Fine Arts, as a McNair Scholar, from the University of Delaware.

Sue Johnson
Professor of Art, St. Mary's College of Maryland

Sue Johnson’s artwork has been the subject of over 40 exhibitions in the United States and England at venues including the Tweed Museum of Art (Duluth, MN), Jan Cicero Gallery (Chicago, IL), Eleanor D. Wilson Museum of Hollins University (Roanoke, VA), Brooklyn Botanic Garden (Brooklyn, NY), Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford, England), The Rosenbach Museum and Library (Philadelphia, PA), Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum (Salisbury, England) and University of Richmond Museums (Richmond, VA). Reviews of Johnson’s work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Art Examiner and Art Papers. Her work is in numerous public collections including the Muscarelle Museum of Art, MOMA/Franklin Furnace Archive, Yale University Libraries, Smithsonian American Art Museum Libraries and Prudential Life Insurance Co. Before joining St. Mary’s College of Maryland, she held teaching positions at Parsons School of Design, Marymount Manhattan College and Herron School of Art/Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from Columbia University, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Syracuse University, and studied painting in London and Florence with Syracuse University. 

Susan Zurbrigg
Painting and Drawing Area Head & Professor of Art, James Madison University

Artist Susan Zurbrigg is a native Chicagoan presently living in Harrisonburg, VA. She is a painter and full Professor in the School of Art, Design & Art History at James Madison University. Her work has been featured regionally and nationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA; The Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook, NY; and The Painting Center, New York, NY. She describes painting as “exploratory thinking” and “a place where philosophical, conceptual and cultural ideas can thrive.”  Her artwork examines issues of identity and autobiography within the language of abstraction. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from M.F.A. Indiana University, Bloomington and Bachelor of Arts in Painting from Bard College.