The Fellows
Six Painters, One Studio

Emma brings a background in classical ballet and fine art to her painting practice. After Terra Arts Academy, she trained at the Florence Academy of Art, graduated, and stayed on as an artist in residence. Before Seattle she split her life in Southern California between teaching academic drawing and a commission treadmill that paid the bills and slowly drained the work. She is here for the work that has been waiting.

Her painting focuses on the stories embedded in faces: "the struggles, the small almost mundane moments that make up so much of life." Awards from the ARC Scholarship, Portrait Society of America, and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. The Seattle Prize is her chance to "develop the world within as well as without."

Diego's roots run through the United States, Mexico, and Switzerland. He studied at Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, then completed the three-year program at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence under nineteenth-century French academic methods. He's currently studying under Daniel Sprick in Denver, working at the intersection of figure, architecture, landscape, and the slow weather of oil paint.

His paintings are built like geology, with hidden details and rich textures that reward sustained looking. He calls it "gem-like quality." Recognition from the ARC Salon, the Almenara Collection, and the Salmagundi Club. In the dinner footage he comes back, again and again, to the difference between art made for the market and art made because someone gave you the room to make it.

Nick grew up in Houston, studied Visualization at Texas A&M, and then walked away from concept-art ambitions to enroll at the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore. He apprenticed with Will Wilson and built a body of work known for chiaroscuro, dramatic still life, and a quiet, painstaking finish. He posts short-format alla-prima painting videos that have built a real following.

He came to Seattle ahead of the cohort, helped set up the studios, and immediately borrowed one of Andrew's Sargents to copy. Six months in, his theory of why he paints had shifted from "realism is a gauge" to "from life is rehumanist." He calls the work he wants to make from here on "cinematic and emotionally resonant figurative masterworks."

Jackson grew up near Chicago, took a BFA at Notre Dame, and completed his MFA at Kendall College of Art and Design in 2021. His early work was pop-art collage. A teaching stint in France introduced him to European masterworks in person and reshaped everything. He has since built a career on commissioned portraits and large narrative paintings, with a First Place Prize in the 2024 Portrait Society of America Members Only Competition and Grand Prizes at the Michigan Fine Arts and Wabash Valley exhibitions.

He packed a moving truck in 2026, drove from Grand Rapids to Seattle with Jillian, and showed up to the Seattle Prize prepared. His debut solo exhibition "Menagerie" opened in Birmingham, Michigan in spring 2025. His mission, in his own words: "to reaffirm and reinvigorate the status of Painting as a vital contemporary medium" in the digital age.

Daniel grew up in the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky, took a BFA from Xavier University, and then spent five years at the Florence Academy of Art. He won the FAA's "Best Painting of the Year" award, served as an artist in residence, and is now a principal instructor in the FAA drawing program while running his own studio practice. Recognition from the Art Renewal Center, the Portrait Society of America, and Southwest Art Magazine's "21 Under 31."

His focus is narrative painting and portraiture. He sees the artist's job in a world of information overload as a clarifying one: to make something beautiful that says, in a single image, what it means to be human now. He pushes himself on multi-figure compositions, the hardest paintings to compose and the ones he believes the moment most needs.

Lukas grew up in Munich and used art as a means of expression and relief from the start. After high school he trained at the Florence Academy of Art, completed the painting program, and stayed on as a Graduate in Residence and instructor in 2023–24. He has also taught at Miami International Fine Arts. Exhibitions in Florence and Turin, features in Fine Art Connoisseur.

His focus is the figure: classical portraiture and "strong or subtle emotional complexities" through narrative or symbolic compositions. He's the European perspective at the table, with a different cultural relationship to the classical tradition than his American peers. His ambition for the Prize: push toward more narrative work and larger-scale compositions, and add to the cohort as a community member.