Baltimore painter Jo Smail wins Trawick Prize

Glenn McNatt reports in the Baltimore Sun that Jo Smail has won the five-year-old Trawick Prize, founded by Bethesda businesswoman Carol Trawick. The competition is open to artists from Maryland, Virginia and Washington: “Baltimore painter Jo Smail, whose abstract paintings of pink squares and dark splotches of pigment on a white ground played a crucial role in her recovery from a stroke in 2000, has been named winner of the prestigious Trawick Prize sponsored by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District. Smail, 64, won the $10,000 first-place award for her paintings Small Birds Flying Low, Humming a Love Song and Code. This was the third time Smail entered the contest; she was a finalist on both previous occasions….The other finalists were Mary Coble, Mary Early, Inga Frick and Baby Martinez, all of Washington, Suzanna Fields of Richmond, Linda Hesh of Alexandria, Va., and Jeanine Harkleroad of Chesapeake, Va….The jurors were Anne Ellegood, associate curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Amy G. Moorefield, assistant director and curator of collections for Virginia Commonwealth University’s Anderson Gallery; and Rex Stevens, chair of the general fine arts department at MICA.” Read more. Visit Smail’s website.