For the past 24 years, thousands of artists from around the globe have submitted their artwork in the Portrait Society of America’s International Portrait Competition with the hope of being selected as one of a handful of talented finalists. For those talented artists who make it to the final few, the competition culminates with our annual gathering of artists, friends, and family, where all can view the winning works up close. While the Portrait Society’s last two events were held virtually, this year we returned to an in-person conference, which was met with great excitement and eagerness. After a weekend full of long-awaited reunions and art-filled days with friends, one attendee wrote to us saying, “Thank you for your diligence in continuing to provide educational programming during the pandemic, I was so excited you made the decision to return to meeting in person, it lifted my spirits, and I’m so grateful to be back with my community.” First Place Painting: Mark Pugh, Girl in a Red Coat in Early Spring, oil, ink and graphite, 20 x 16”

On Saturday evening, April 23, attendees filled into the Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt in Atlanta to enjoy a delicious three-course dinner and to hear our chairman, Michael Shane Neal, announce this year’s International Portrait Competition winners, including the artist who would take home the Draper Grand Prize with a $25,000 cash award. Each of the top winning works displays a depth of skill and excellence in their selected medium, as well as a sophisticated aesthetic. The artists who created these works also showed a commonality in experience and inspiration which, in a word, is perseverance.

The 2022 Draper Grand Prize winner Luis Alvarez Roure’s work, Masquerade shows a man covering his face with makeup as if he is preparing to perform. The inspiration for this work came from the opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo when the clown must perform his act after learning of a tragic situation. Roure says, “my subject shows an array of contrary emotions and feelings such as love, hate, strength, and weakness to convey a spiritual battle. However, my painting is not embedded with a singular nor a particular story. My painting is a metaphor for humanity confronting life in situations of pain, misery, and tragedy.

The man symbolizes us all as we metaphorically put on the mask to our emotions and feelings as the show of life must go on.” 

Roure has been entering the International Portrait Competition since 2014, and this was his first time being a finalist. He says, “Something I never did was to erase my rejection emails. I always took them with a level of disagreement at first, but most importantly, I put a lot of attention and faith in the very last sentence that comes with the announcement that read something like: even though your work was not accepted this year, we encourage you to continue to take risks and enter the competition again. This, for me, served as a reminder of what it takes to be an artist of a high level and that if this were to be something easy, maybe it wouldn’t be so unique and special.” William F. Draper Grand Prize Winner and People’s Choice Winner: Luis Alvarez Roure, Masquerade, oil on linen, 46 x 40”

Artist Mark Pugh’s portrait of his daughter Sophie was awarded First Place in Painting. On his journey to becoming a full-time artist, Pugh says, “Both of my parents were artists, though not professionally, so art was always prominent in my upbringing. My mom worked in ink and watercolor and had a very illustrative look to her work, while my dad leaned more toward realism. Growing up I wanted to be an illustrator of children’s books, but as I got older, I got cold feet and instead pursued an education in psychology, earning a bachelor’s degree at Utah Valley University. I loved psychology, but my need to create was overwhelming, so I abandoned plans to become a psychologist. My cousin Jeff Hein saw my art potential and encouraged me to pursue a serious career as an artist, allowing me to participate in his academy in Salt Lake City, Utah. After eightyears of honing my skills and developing a body of work, I finally decided to shift to my pursuit to a professional level and have been working exclusively as an artist ever since.” First Place Drawing: Casey Childs, Hannah, charcoal, 16 x 12”

Making the decision to be a full-time artist was not an easy one. When Pugh’s wife was six months pregnant with their daughter Sophie (the subject of his winning work), he approached her about the idea of quitting his job. While the idea was terrifying, especially with a baby on the way, she agreed. Pugh admits it was rough at the start, but he was able to sell enough paintings to keep the family afloat. He recalls, “It’s fair to say that Sophie and my art career are the same age and as I watch her grow, I see the same growth in my artwork.”

Kevin Chambers’ inspiration for his work, which was awarded First Place in Sculpture, was the grit and perseverance of one of his long-time models and friend. Chambers reflects on the work, “This piece can be seen as a metaphor for so many things: life in general, the life of an artist, the world as whole, the human species, and on and on.” But the story behind the work is a more personal one for the artist. A few years ago, his model, Ellie, came extremely close to losing her life due to a medical anomaly in her heart. Luckily, her amazing husband was able to keep her alive until paramedics arrived, and she was rushed into emergency open heart surgery. A mother of five, she was on her way to making a full recovery, when her husband was diagnosed with an advanced cancer. They pulled together again, and amazingly, he beat the cancer. Their survival and perseverance were the story Chambers wanted to tell. About the composition, he says, “The piece is intentionally designed to be off balance and feel precarious to the viewer. Nothing in life is stable. Even as she has been shot through the heart with the arrow, she is pulling the arrow out and grasping with the tips of her toes to right herself and overcome.”

Chambers’ path to becoming a full-time artist has also been one of strength and resilience. 

After college, he secured an apprenticeship at a sculpture studio in Atlanta. It was an opportunity that taught him a myriad of skills and helped develop his sense of business. But after 10 years, he made the difficult decision to strike out on his own. He and his wife Lauren made a plan; however, the next few years were difficult. While his main income was making molds and resin casts, it was difficult to make ends meet, and at one point, they sat down together to look at the bank account. Chambers recalls, “It was one of those moments when you say to yourself ‘do you quit and go beg for the job back?’ or ‘push forward and make it happen.’ We refused to give up and went out and collected from every client who owed us anything. We made it through that month and never looked back.”Second Place: Jamie Coreth, Self Portrait with an Expression of a Sculpture of me by my Father, oil on linen, 48 x 24"

This year’s First Place in Drawing was awarded to Casey Childs for his drawing of a young woman celebrating her graduation from high school. Like Chambers, Childs took a job right out of college and worked in graphic design for 10 years. He loved drawing from an early age and knew he eventually wanted to pursue a career in an art-related field. While working in graphic design, he painted on the side and continued to study with private instruction from artist William Whitaker. Childs says, “Though I recognize how great it is to paint now professionally in my studio, I remain grateful for that design job. The background and knowledge it yielded helped my work to grow and improve over the years. Today, focusing full-time on painting has allowed for an important transition in my work, both in subject matter and my overall process.” For his winning work, Childs tried to portray his subject’s natural beauty, youthful innocence, and hopeful spirit. 

Jamie Coreth’s path to a full-time painting career began at a young age. 

After graduating from Oxford University with a bachelor’s in archaeology and anthropology, he decided to take a year off to explore his interest in art and studied in Italy and London, gaining most of his training at the Florence Academy of Art. After three years of study, he was convinced he wanted to be a full-time artist. His self-portrait, which was created during the pandemic, was awarded Second Place in this year’s competition. About the work, Coreth says, “With time on my hands thanks to the lockdown, I made a self-portrait with a sculpture my father had created of me some time ago. I wanted to get at some of the ideas in my mind at the time: the sense of how other perceive you, versus how you perceive yourself; personal struggle, and technical interest in certain artists.” Coreth was interested in the mark-making and aesthetics of painters like Gustav Klimt and Vincent van Gogh. He continues, “At university, I specialized in the study of ancient art. Rock art and Cave art across the world which have a consistent set of signs and symbols in them. Handprints feature regularly, establishing a lasting connection between the person and the surface they were working on. Fingerprints are also used today as a form of individual identity.” In his work, a small blue fingerprint represents a sign of the perseverance of art across generations, from father to son, and a symbol understood across millennia. First Place Sculpture: Kevin Chambers, Spiritus Invictus, bronze, 31 x 30 x 20"

Without a doubt, the theme of perseverance was center stage at this year’s conference—from the Portrait Society’s commitment to returning to an in-person experience, to the many attendees who braved travel from all over the globe, to our Grand Prize winner who never gave up his dream of becoming a finalist. Roure said it perfectly: “Perseverance is undoubtedly a key to achieve our goals. Had I quit after my first or second rejection, I wouldn’t be where I am today and closer to where I want to be tomorrow.”  —

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Christine Egnoski is the executive director for the Portrait Society of America and has served in that position since the founding of the organization in February of 1998. In addition to writing for International Artist magazine she also provides occasional articles for American Art Collector. Passionate about portraiture, she can be reached at info@portraitsociety.org.

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