Here’s the Woman That’s Going to Paint Gina Raimondo’s Portrait and She’s a New Yorker
Sunday, May 29, 2022
The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) announced this week that former Governor Gina Raimondo has selected Patricia Watwood, of Brooklyn, N.Y., to paint her official gubernatorial portrait.
Watwood was selected from a field of 350 applicants -- the official portrait selection committee of State Arts Council members and community representatives initially narrowed the applications for the commission to 11 artists.
SEE ALL THE RI GUBERNATORIAL PORTRAITS BELOW
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTNew York-based Watwood "is a leading figure in the contemporary figurative movement," claims the RISCA.
Her subjects are primarily women and figures, incorporating myth and narrative. She has been exhibited at the Beijing World Art Museum, The European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), The Butler Museum, and is in the collections of The St. Louis University Museum of Art, and The New Britain Museum of American Art.
Watwood's Orpheus Playing for Persephone and Eurydice in the Underworld, 2013, oil on linen, 72 x 108 inches
Time to End the Tradition?
GoLocal's architecture critic Will Morgan said that Rhode Island should end the official portrait tradition. He wrote in 2021:
Unless the Rhode Island Council of the Arts is going to get really radical and hire someone like Kehinde Wiley, who painted the official portrait of Barack Obama, it is time to accept that the tradition of idealized likeness of our leaders has long passed its sell-by date. The wooden facsimiles of our governors will never capture to the spirit of someone caught millions of times over on camera. There are formal oil paintings of FDR and Churchill, for example, but their iconic images were caught on film.
Why spend fifty grand for something that will be both unflattering to the subject and embarrassing to the State. Let's dump the painted portrait project and ask Rhode Islanders to submit their own photos of Governor Raimondo, from which the arts council's committee can choose the image that best represents our first woman governor.
Architecture critic Will Morgan argues that the political portrait is a tradition that should be done away with.
Watwood's Reaction
Watwood said about her selection according to RISCA, “It is a great honor to be selected to portray Rhode Island’s first woman governor. In creating this work of art for the State House, I look forward to celebrating her inspiring service, and show young women, girls, and the people of Rhode Island that there is a place in leadership at the highest level for all of us."
Previously, Watwood’s commissioned portraits include two mayors of St. Louis for City Hall and two historical portraits of pioneering women, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and Ida B. Wells, both in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums. Other institutions that have commissioned her work include Weill Cornell Medical Center, St. Louis University, and Washington University. Originally from St. Louis, she has created portraits for many families in the St. Louis area as well as around her current home, New York.
Watwood earned her MFA with honors from New York Academy of Art and studied with Jacob Collins as a founding member of the Water Street Atelier. Watwood has produced instructional DVDs including “Creating Portraits from Life,” with Streamline Art Video, has been a professor of drawing at New York Academy of Art.
She has created several online drawing courses, including Seven Days of Drawing, with the creative streaming platform Craftsy.com. She has written articles for American Artist, American Arts Quarterly, and Fine Art Connoisseur magazines, and teaches painting in Brooklyn, online with Terracotta.org, and in workshops around the country.
Her first book, “The Path of Drawing,” is coming out with Monacelli Studio Press in late 2022. Learn more about Watwood at www.patriciawatwood.com.
State law requires that an official portrait be commissioned for each governor by the Secretary of State’s office. The Secretary of State has requested that the State’s Arts Agency oversee the process.
Related Slideshow: Rhode Island Gubernatorial Portraits, 1775-2015
Check out the slideshow of every existing portrait of Governors of Rhode Island, dating back to 1775.
There are no official portraits for John Collins (served 1786-1790), Henry Smith (served 1805-1806), Isaac Wilbour (served 1806-1807), Charles Jackson (served 1845-1846), and George P Wetmore (served 1885-1887).
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- Rhode Island Gubernatorial Portraits, 1775-2015
