Fellowship Exhibitions

2025 Fellowship Exhibitions

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Program is a vital source of funding for the visual arts and art history in Virginia. VMFA is committed to supporting professional artists as well as art students who demonstrate exceptional creative ability in their chosen discipline. Since its establishment in 1940 by the late John Lee Pratt of Fredericksburg, VMFA’s Fellowship Program has awarded more than $6 million to Virginians. The program marked its 85th anniversary in 2025.

As part of our commitment to Virginians, the Pauley Center Galleries, Amuse Restaurant, the Claiborne Robertson Room, and select spaces at the Richmond International Airport are dedicated to showcasing the work of VMFA Visual Arts Fellowship recipients. In addition, VMFA collaborates with Statewide Partners around the commonwealth to host exhibitions featuring recent recipients of a VMFA Visual Arts Fellowship.

Still Life Insinuated

By Sally Bowring
Feb 19, 2025 – Aug 18, 2025 | VMFA Amuse Restaurant & Claiborne Robertson Room

As an artist working primarily with acrylic paint, I create still life compositions that embrace the beauty of decomposition and deconstruction. My work invites viewers into an intimate exploration of domestic objects—each piece transformed through the use of generous color, shape, and pattern.

In my paintings, I aim to abstract the familiar, allowing forms to dissolve and emerge, encouraging the viewer to fill in the gaps with their own interpretations. This interaction fosters a sense of intimacy and connection, as personal narratives intertwine with my artistic vision.

The interplay of color is central to my practice; vibrant hues evoke emotion and depth, while contrasting patterns create visual rhythm. Through this lens, I seek to capture the essence of love and familiarity in our everyday surroundings, revealing the hidden stories within seemingly mundane objects.

Ultimately, my work is an invitation to reflect on the beauty of the overlooked, transforming domestic spaces into realms of abstraction where memory and emotion converge. I hope to inspire viewers to find their own connections within these decomposed forms, celebrating the intimate dance between the familiar and the abstract.

Sally Bowring is a recipient of a 2003–04 VMFA Professional Visual Arts Fellowship.

IMAGE Still Life Insinuated, 2024, Sally Bowring

Friends of My Luonto

By Mahin Thorp
Feb 14, 2025 – Aug 17, 2025 | Pauley Education Center Galleries

Informed by the childhood observation of mining industries, my work examines the ways humans project and abstract their own image onto landscapes. By conducting site visits, I take images of stone from high-usage mined sites. I search for images, figures, words, numbers, animals, and forms embedded in the stone to express their intrinsic power to absorb our histories. By finding images in the stone, I show how we project ourselves onto landscapes through myths, mining, and geologic and animistic practices. By researching the animistic, geological, and monetary quality of stone, I make rocky worlds that reflect how stones are distorted and abstracted by human contact.

My paintings are layered with stone and pigment, initially mirroring the texture and appearance of stone while closely resembling my source imagery. Upon deeper examination, characters, fossils, numerals, and text emerge from the stony surfaces, unveiling narratives imposed by human intervention or arising naturally. By drawing from stone, I highlight the way humans impose themselves onto geological material, distorting and reshaping it while engaging with its imaginative and uncanny aspects. My practice regards geological structures as image makers, writers, and preservers of life, embodying both natural histories and human mythologies intertwined with the earth.

Mahin Thorp is a recipient of a 2023–24 VMFA Professional Visual Arts Fellowship.

IMAGE What Came from a Glacier, 2024, Mahin Thorp

Candy King

By Amy Chan
Feb 14, 2024 – Aug 10, 2025 | Richmond International Airport

Amy Chan (she/her) is a painter and ceramicist. Her abstract paintings celebrate flat, playful forms with an artificial color palette. They contain the optimism that is part of their making, also hinting at the unease of a science fiction landscape. The color brims with ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia, while shapes perch curiously on the edge of harmony. All the forms and patterns are sourced from life, and Chan’s visual vocabulary pulls from areas such as video games, operation manuals, botanical drawing, tarot, and cell biology. Her compositions play with harmony and dissonance, while occasionally bringing us back to the real.

Amy Chan lives in Richmond and teaches at the University of Virginia. Her work can be found in the collections of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, the Spencer Museum of Art, and Capital One. She has been awarded grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Amy Chan is a recipient of a 2007–08 VMFA Graduate Visual Arts Fellowship.

IMAGE Star Swipe, 2024, Amy Chan

TOP OF PAGE What Came from a Glacier (detail), 2024, Mahin Thorp

2021 Fellowship Exhibitions

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Program is a vital source of funding for the visual arts and art history in Virginia. VMFA is committed to supporting professional artists as well as art students who demonstrate exceptional creative ability in their chosen discipline. Since its establishment in 1940 by the late John Lee Pratt of Fredericksburg, the Fellowship Program has awarded nearly $5.5 million in fellowships to Virginians. 2015 marked the 75th anniversary of VMFA’s Fellowship Program.

As part of our commitment to Virginians, the Pauley Center Galleries, Amuse Restaurant, the Claiborne Robertson Room, and select spaces at the Richmond International Airport are dedicated to showcasing the work of VMFA Visual Arts Fellowship recipients.

Aggregate

By Sterling Clinton Hundley
Jul 1, 2021 to Jan 31, 2022 | Pauley Center Galleries

Aggregate is a survey of work from American painter and graphic artist, Sterling Clinton Hundley ranging from 2009- 2021. Throughout Hundley’s work, time is an indelible theme explored through drawing, collage, painting and sculpture that collects life in motion into a series of compressed images that blur the line between traditional cell animation and painting

Hundley is a VMFA 2020-21 Professional Fellow and his work is held in private collections internationally, from Russia, Norway, England, Germany and throughout the United States and can be found in the permanent collections of Amazon, the Museum of American Illustration, Capital One Bank, Rolling Stone Magazine, as well as on display in the US Senate Building.

His book can be found in the Museum Store.

IMAGES: The Good Steward, Sterling Clinton Hundley | Big Cartel, Fruitless Endeavor, Sterling Clinton Hundley | Another Sunday, Sterling Clinton Hundley

Something Similar

By Claire Stankus
Jul 9, 2021 to Jan 23, 2022 | VMFA Amuse Restaurant & Claiborne Robertson Room

I make paintings to simplify immediate visual surroundings. They are inspired by familiar indoor scenes of cast shadows from house plants, patterns coincidentally matching, the grid of window frames, to shapes of flowers, oranges, or birthday sprinkles. I believe many people are attracted to these overlooked moments and my paintings provide an opportunity to revisit them. Beginning with a photo reference or memory, I create casual marks, flattened fields of color, and invented light and shadow to break down the recognizable into something ambiguous yet familiar. When these paintings are not recognized by their initial inspiration they can be admired purely by their patterns, subtle color shifts, and illusions of light and flatness. The remaining abstraction is where we may find unexpected curiosity or joy.

My newest paintings are heavily inspired by my experiences from two recent artist residencies: The Sam & Adele Golden Foundation in New Berlin, NY, and the Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. In both settings, one during winter, and one during summer, I was struck by each location’s architecture and sunlight. I used these simple themes to play with striking color combinations, balance speed and personality of brush marks, and create the possibility of space within a fairly shallow depth of field. Displayed as a large grouping or in pairs, my paintings are made to reference and complement each other’s visual components while honoring the location they were created in.

I want to share the value of contemporary abstract painting; that a particular balance of line and form can create compelling compositions, or how a minimal shape of paint can feel sweet, stubborn, playful, or funny.

Claire Stankus is a 2020 Emergency Relief Fellowship Recipient.

IMAGES: Sunrise Silhouette, Claire Stankus | Paint Stickers, Claire Stankus | Night Jade, Claire Stankus | Light Stream, Claire Stankus | Fruit Fade, Claire Stankus

Minyatür: A Journey from the Classical to the Contemporary

By Sermin Ciddi
Jun 21, 2021 to Jan 10, 2022 | Richmond International Airport

Sermin Ciddi is a renowned Turkish artist skilled in modern miniature (minyatür) painting, one of the highly specialized visual arts of Ottoman and Turkish culture along with calligraphy (hat) and marbling paper (ebru). Born in Istanbul, Ms. Ciddi takes inspiration from a variety of sources: places she has lived and traveled to, the architectural salience of each location, and finally, their interaction with surrounding nature. Depictions of environmental themes and imagery through symbolism are recent additions to her existing portfolio. Scenes including Alexandria, Virginia, Ottoman and Turkish architecture, and the enduring relationship between dragons and phoenixes come to life on her canvases.

Sermin Ciddi is a 2020 Emergency Relief Fellowship Recipient.

IMAGES: Kızkulesi, Sermin Ciddi | Great Falls, Sermin Ciddi | Anatolian Fortress, Sermin Ciddi