The Jeanette Koumjian Art Scholarship, established by George Yacoubian in honor of his maternal aunt, Jeanette Koumjian, will be endowed with a $250.00 donation each calendar year. The Art Scholarship is earmarked exclusively for an orphaned Armenian child who shows exemplary talent in painting and the fine arts. Each calendar year, SOAR will request submissions in the form of a portfolio and proposed use for the scholarship funds. Ms. Koumjian, in collaboration with SOAR, will review the proposals and award one scholarship winner each calendar year.
Jeanette Koumjian concentrates on two areas: her still lifes, executed in a closely observed representational style, are specifically designed to present dynamic challenges in terms of light, color, composition and command of her medium, oil on linen or acrylic on wood panel. For landscapes, she has explored various areas in and around Santa Fe, World Heritage Sites in Taos Pueblo and Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico and a National Historic Landmark, Green-Wood Cemetery, nearby her studio in Brooklyn, New York. Paintings reveal both the graphic and intensely emotional impact of these places where man and nature meet.
In 2001 and 2003, Koumjian was awarded by the Mill Atelier Foundation artist residency grants which enabled her to create the Cavern Series and Santa Fe Details series. More recently in 2009, a ten-week residency granted by The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation allowed her to focus on landscapes in the Taos area. Jeanette’s work has been featured in many shows in the United States and Europe, including: Eye of the Beholder, a one-person exhibition at The Armenian Library and Museum of America in Boston, MA; Art in the Yard, hosted and curated by The Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA; the 173rd Annual Exhibition of the National Academy Museum in New York City; Art of the Northeast in New Canaan, CT; Exhibition of Works on Paper, at The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA; and Artists on the Move, an exhibition marking the centennial of Van Gogh’s death, at the Salle Polyvalente in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
Her still life, “Common Threads Unite Us,” received Honorable Mention in The Artist’s Magazine National Competition. She was awarded First Place for her oil painting, “Integration,” at the 32nd Annual Juried Exhibition of the Ringwood Manor Association of the Arts. That same year, she received the Medal of Honor for her series of drawings, “Pick of the Crop, II,” from the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club. Her works, “Counted Out,” “Ram’s Skull Studies, 1-3” and “Jesse’s Corn,” made her a two-time winner of the club’s Cash Award and President’s Award. Jurors Jonathan Talbot and Nessa Grainger named Koumjian one of two artists awarded a show in The West Wing Gallery of the Manor House Museum, a National Historic Landmark within Ringwood State Park, NJ. Winsor & Newton, the fine arts materials company, has twice selected her work from more than 1,000 entries each year, to be among 12 featured in limited edition calendars.
In the early 1980s, Jeanette assisted painter Francis Cunningham and sculptor Barney Hodes in founding The New Brooklyn School of Life Drawing, Painting and Sculpture which later merged with and became The New York Academy of Art, now one of the country’s premier institutions for classical fine arts instruction. Additionally, she has served as an instructor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Jeanette’s works are included in corporate and private collections nationwide.
