Joyful portrait: Rebecca Orcutt painting ?chosen for international ?portrait competition

Published 3:22 pm Wednesday, July 1, 2015

North Bend artist Rebecca Orcutt, 22, was in London last week, for the opening of a show featuring her work in the National Portrait Gallery.

Her portrait, “What Now” was selected for the 2015 BP Portrait Award show, which opened June 18 at the gallery.

This year’s competition drew a record-breaking 2,748 entries by artists from 92 countries around the world. In its 36th year at the National Portrait Gallery, the competition offers a first prize of £30,000, making it the most prestigious international portrait painting competition of its kind.

Orcutt is the daughter of Steve and Joy Orcutt. She graduated in May from Gordon College, in Wenham, Mass., with a degree in painting. Following her trip to London, she will return to the Valley to put on her annual Joyful Summer Art Camp (http://beckyorcutt.com/page22.html) with her sister, Amanda, and mother.

Before the portrait show opening ceremony, Orcutt answered a few questions about her work by e-mail with the Record.

Tell us about your painting work. Do you have a favorite medium, favorite subject?

I have been painting from a young age, but drew a lot too. I began primarily painting more than anything else in high school.

Oil paint is my favorite medium. My favorite subject is the figure, but I enjoy painting it in relation to other objects or spaces.

How did you create the painting selected for the Portrait Award show? What inspired it, and what made you enter the competition?

I painted the piece in the fall as a beginning for my senior art thesis painting project. I had the image in my head for a while before I painted it.

It came from an exploration of the conflicting realities of comedy and tragedy in life. I was trying to capture something of the absurdity of this, of what daily life can often bring, a sense of humor, and also despair, and not quite knowing which to embrace.

My professor, Jean Sbarra Jones suggested entering the competition.

I asked my friend Andrew Farley to model. He was in a college improv troupe with me.

Without Andrew’s face, what makes this painting a portrait?

Although his face is turned away, it can still be considered a portrait because portraits capture a likeness of someone, and that doesn’t just have to be through the face, but in something about their essence, their being.

Many elements of the painting seem like Andrew to me, the patterned sweater that he often wears, his feet turned in, the spinning top toy. He is very funny, and has a playful personality, that sometimes seems at odds with the world.

Tell us about your work.

My website shows personal work that is really just about what I am interested to make at the time. I’m not trying to make it come across a particular way, people could see a lot of different things. My most recent work came from an interest in comedy and absurdist theatre.

How did your Joyful Summer art camp come about?

The art camps my sister and I run are all about joy. Art has brought us both joy, and we want to encourage a love for art that we found as children.

My mom’s name is Joy. She is a Kindergarten teacher, and I have so much admiration and respect for her. She has inspired me over the years with her amazing teaching ability, genuine care and dedication to her students. She also taught us so much and always encouraged us to create.

I am so grateful for her and my dad’s support always in following my dream to paint, and so the camp has been a sort of way to share a love for learning and art that my parents shared with us.

What’s next for you?

I will be moving to New York City in August to study painting in graduate school at the New York Academy of Art.

“What Now,” the painting selected for the 2015 Portrait Award show, by North Bend native Rebecca Ocrcutt.