Don Bachardy Fellows
2024
Pedro Suzuki Ursini was the 2024 Don Bachardy Fellow. He was in residence at London's Royal Drawing School from 22 April to 29 June 2024.
Pedro was born in 1993 in São Paulo, Brazil, where he currently lives and works. He holds a degree in visual arts from the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo. He is now pursuing a master’s degree at the same institution, exploring the interplay between drawing and thinking, through his practice as an intaglio printmaker. In 2021 he was nominated for the PIPA Prize, Brazil’s prestigious award for emerging artists.
See more of Pedro Ursini’s work on his Instagram page.
2023
The 2023 Don Bachardy Fellowship was awarded to Pace Taylor, who attended the Royal Drawing School from April 24 to 1 July 2023. Pace is a US artist based in Portland, Oregon. They received their BFA in Digital Arts from the University of Oregon (2015) and have shown their pastel and graphite work at West Coast galleries including Nationale, La Loma Projects, Oregon Contemporary (formerly Disjecta), and Upfor Gallery. Pace describes their work as "very queer and intimate, investigating how people connect with each other."
See Pace Taylor talk about the fellowship in this short film made by the Royal Drawing School:
More information about Pace’s work can be found here: https://www.pacetaylor.com.
2022
The 2022 Don Bachardy Fellowship was awarded to Sa'ad Choeb, who attended the Royal Drawing School from September 19, 2022, to March 2023. Work he made during his fellowship was exhibited in a solo studio show—"Any Resemblance to Reality is Purely Coincidental"—at Space Studios in Hackney in February 2023.
Sa'ad, a painter, studied fine arts at Damascus University for two years, and got his BA in Political Studies with a double minor in philosophy and social and political thought from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. He was an artist in residence at Ashkal Alwan in Lebanon from 2020 to 2021. Sa'ad's work focuses on ruptures of form, how planes intersect with other elements, and how they can be organised and reorganised in relationship to each other to create an optical structure for rupture.
Sa'ad talks about his practice in this short film made by the Royal Drawing School:
See more of his work on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saadchoeb/.
2020
The 2020 Don Bachardy Fellowship was awarded to Steven Johnson, a graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art and the New York Academy of Art's MFA program. Steven attended the Royal Drawing School from January 20 to March 28, 2020, and describes the experience in this short film made by the Royal Drawing School:
Of the fellowship, Steven says, “My exposure to art as a child was directly correlated to my mother's ability to pay. For a single mother living on an American schoolteacher’s salary, with three kids, the options consisted, simply, of what was free. I drew as a child, but got way too many notes sent home about drawing on my homework assignments. It wasn’t ‘productive’, and it ‘wouldn't get me out of the ‘Hood.’’ It was neither a skilled trade, nor a fiscally responsible endeavour. So I locked away my need to draw for years, and tried to do something ‘sensible’. Momma was afraid I wasn’t going to make it; I was too.
The Don Bachardy Fellowship with the support of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation has enabled me to carve out essential time to be with my practice without the constant financial pressures of studio rent, material cost, and professional expenses. I can commit to making art full-time without fear of personal detriment. The three months of mobility and support I have in London has and will continue to change my life. With the support and mentorship of the Royal Drawing School I know that a career of making drawings is indeed ‘responsible’, ‘productive’, and ‘sensible’.”
2019
The 2019 Don Bachardy Fellow, Samantha Ludwig, graduated with a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2014, and has exhibited at Studio Art Center International, Italy, the Cressman Center for Visual Arts, Louisville, and the Kentucky Museum of Arts, among other institutions. Through her series of architectural drawings, Ludwig examines ideas of history, tradition and perspective. She attended the Royal Drawing School from January 14 to March 23, 2019. More information about her work can be found on her website: www.samanthaludwig.com.
Ludwig says of her time at the Royal Drawing School, "This experience has been quite wonderful. The program doesn't only help a student hone their skill, but more importantly the tutors push you to find your own unique voice as an artist. This is surprising, as the British tutors are much more engaged with tradition than the American ones are. But I've learned that familiarity with tradition can make you paradoxically more aware of your own unique personality. This isn't a lesson that will only help you in one series, but guide you through your life's work, and help you develop yourself as a whole."
2018
The 2018 Don Bachardy Fellowship was awarded to Shuk Han Lui, from Salt Lake City, Utah, who studied life drawing and etching at the Royal Drawing School from January 15 to March 24, 2018. Lui is a multidisciplinary artist who works predominantly in mixed-media paintings and artists’ books. She earned her MFA in Drawing and Painting from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia.
2017
The first Don Bachardy Fellowship was awarded to American artist Nicholas Wilson. Wilson, who graduated from Yale University in 2016 with a degree in fine art, attended the Royal Drawing School for three months beginning April 2017. Primarily a painter, Wilson is interested in exploring issues of contemporary life through his work.