Richard Kevorkian

Richard Kevorkian received a B.F.A. in painting and a minor in art history and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia (1961) and his M.F.A.  in painting from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California (1962). He served as Assistant Professor at the Department of Painting in Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1967 to 1969, Associate Professor and Chairman from 1969 to 1977, Director of the Foundation Program from 1970 to1972, Chairman of the Painting and Printmaking Department from 1977 to 1981, and Professor from 1981 to 1993. He has served as visiting artist for the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland, Ulster College in Belfast, and summer painting professor for Studio Arts Centers International in Florence, Italy, the Winchester College of Art, and the Loughborough College of Art in England.

In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, Richard has received various awards including a Faculty Creative Research Grant from the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University (1974), an Individual Senior Artists Grant from the National Endowment of the Arts (1976), a graduate teaching assistantship from the California College of Arts and Crafts (1961-62), and a traveling fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1961-62).

Richard also established the first Faculty Exchange Program for the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University and was instrumental in establishing the Virginia Commonwealth University Gallery of Art.

He has been in numerous traveling exhibitions such as Southern Abstraction: Five Painters in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee (1983-84), Thirty-Five Artists in the Southeast in Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia (1976-78), and Paintings in the South 1564-1980 in New Orleans, Birmingham, New York, Mississippi, Louisville, and Richmond (1983-85); group shows such as the Virginia Artists’ Biennial Exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia (1961), Contemporary Art Acquisitions: 1980-1983 in the Equitable Gallery in New York, New York; and Artists Members 10th Anniversary Show at the 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia (1989). His solo shows include exhibitions at the Anderson Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, in 1971, the Eric Schindler Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, in 1976, Gallery 4 in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1980, the Aaron Gallery in Washington, D.C., in 1990, and the Marita Gilliam Gallery in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1993.

He is currently retired as a professor emeritus of Virginia Commonwealth University.