Jennifer Packer MFA ’12 was recently named one of two winners of the 2025 Heinz for the Arts award, given by the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Family Foundation and which comes with an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000 for the winners. 2025 marks the 30th year that the Hertz Family Foundation has offered the award in honor of US Senator John Heinz (1938-91), to people working in the arts, economy and environment.
From The Art Newspaper‘s feature on Packer and the award: “Packer, who was born in Philadelphia in 1984, earned her BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and her MFA from Yale University. She has developed a distinctive style of boldly colourful, texturally fluid figurative painting. Her practice spans still lifes and portraits; the latter in particular have a psychological intensity and sense of intimacy that can be quite haunting, with figures alternately seeming to dissolve into their surroundings or radiate off the canvas with chromatic intensity.”
Read the full feature on Packer and Marie Watt, the other 2025 recipient, here.
Photo Credit: Jennifer Packer, Eric, 2012-13 Photo: Jason Wyche; courtesy of the artist, Corvi-Mora, London and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York