Bethesda Painting Awards Jury

The 2025 competition will be juried by Kevin Mitchell and Mary Proenza.

Kevin Mitchell, Washington, DC

Kevin Mitchell earned his Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from the University of Texas at Austin. Mitchell began teaching drawing and painting classes at The Catholic University of America in the Fall of 2002. He has also taught art courses at Virginia Commonwealth University, Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, VA, and the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA. Mitchell has exhibited his work at galleries which include the Bowery Gallery, New York, NY; Hill Center Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Brentwood Arts Exchange, Brentwood, MD; Signal 66, Washington, D.C.; Dallas Visual Art Center in Dallas, TX; Creative Artist Network in Philadelphia, PA; Anderson Gallery in Richmond, VA; First Street Gallery in New York, NY; PEPCO Edison Place Gallery in Washington, D.C. and Galeria Juan Pardo Heeren in Lima, Peru.

Mary Proenza, Arlington, VA

Mary Proenza holds a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from New York Studio School, an Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from The New School, and a Bachelor or Arts in literature from UC Santa Barbara's College of Creative Studies. Recent exhibitions include "Cladogram" at the Katonah Museum of Art, NY, and "Digging In" at Cody Gallery, Arlington, VA. As part of a 2022 NEA Arts Project Grant, she exhibited paintings from her "Memoir" series and created four linoleum cut prints for the collaborative book Truth Comes Slowly. Her art has been featured on book, magazine, and CD covers, including those of Knopf and CMH records. As a writer, her reviews have appeared in Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail. Currently, she's working on graphic memoir combining visual art and writing, which has been supported by various fellowships, including a 2024 residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Proenza serves as an Associate Professor of Art at Marymount University, Arlington, VA.