Free to enter · Open to U.S. citizens
Presented by the Occidental Fine Arts Center, Seattle.
Enter up to three paintings, made in 2024 or later. Entries open November 5.
Paint with us
A year in a studio here at the Occidental, with time, critique and serious peers.
About the fellowshipSend us your painting
Made by hand. $50,000 in prizes, featuring the $10,000 Rehumanism Award. Free to enter.
You're here: the prizesPaint with AI A separate prize
An independent prize for paintings made by hand with AI as a partner. $20,000 in prizes.
Visit The New SalonSix cash prizes. You keep your work and your copyright.
The single work, from any category, that best joins mastery with beauty, truth or love.
The hand-made work that best embodies Rehumanism: beauty, truth and love.
The best portrait.
The best work in the Open category.
For an exhibited artist who is 35 or under, or who first showed work in public in 2022 or later.
Chosen by visitors
Who chooses
Volunteers from The Seattle Prize Fellowship choose, with Andrew Conru's help, which works are invited in front of the judges: the 50 to 100 works in the show. The first round is blind.
They pick the winners in front of the real paintings, and are announced this winter. Andrew chairs and breaks ties.
Fellows who serve on the panel don't enter; each may hang one work on a Fellows' Wall, outside the awards. The other fellows are welcome to enter. People's Choice is chosen by visitors' votes. How judging works
What is Rehumanism
Rehumanism is a simple idea: paintings made with real skill and real heart, that give us back a piece of our own story. A goodbye, a homecoming, friends around a table, painted so you feel it. It isn't a reaction against anything; it's art that people from every side can love.
What is RehumanismOur mission
Our goal is to bring heritage art, the traditional forms of representational realism, back to the public, and to make it exciting and accessible. On one level, the Prize is simply our way to bring some of the most amazing works together in one place, with no barrier to entry. It's one part of that larger mission.
What is RehumanismBeauty · Truth · Love
The words are set in the mosaic at the Occidental's door, and they are the heart of this prize. Craft gets a work into the room. What wins is the feeling a viewer carries home.
When you enter, you tick the one each work carries most. It helps the jury see what you were reaching for.
Three categories
Your works can be in different categories. Year one especially looks for emotional power, and for work that speaks to our own time.
I The flagship
Work that carries beauty, truth or love to people living now: joy, tenderness, wonder, a memory worth keeping, people brought together.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893. Hampton University Museum, Virginia. See it at Hampton University Museum
II A person, seen truly
A person, seen truly: a portrait can honor someone, a parent, a friend, a stranger worth remembering. Commissioned or not, from life or from your own references.
John Singer Sargent, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892. National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. See it at the National Galleries of Scotland
III Everything else
Figure, landscape, still life, interiors, animals and imaginative work: anything representational that delights or moves you, as a physical original.
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877. The Art Institute of Chicago. See it at the Art Institute of Chicago
Paintings that have moved people for centuries, and ones made in our lifetime, are on the What is Rehumanism page.
Art of our times
Phones in every hand and loneliness at every table. Machines that write and paint. A pandemic, a world on the move, families that look different from their grandparents'. Paint it so well that a viewer a hundred years from now will know how it felt.
The exhibition · May and June 2027
The Selection Panel chooses 50 to 100 works for the Colisevm, the restored Coliseum Theatre at Fifth and Pike in downtown Seattle, and each artist receives an honorarium of $100 to $250, depending on the size of the work, to help with shipping. Works may be sold, with no commission.
Visit the ColisevmRendering of the Coliseum Theatre interior, Conru Art Foundation.
Talks
A talk series with several speakers is planned alongside the Prize, with speakers and dates to be announced.
Proposed topics
The year ahead
November 5
Free to enter, online
March 31
11:59 pm Pacific
April 16
After two rounds of judging
April 19
People's Choice voting opens
May 13
At the Colisevm, Fifth and Pike
June 26
People's Choice named
Yes. There is no fee to enter, to be selected or to win. We built the tools to handle entries ourselves, so your part is simply to upload your work. The one thing we ask is that you share your entry with a public post, so the word spreads.
Entries open on November 5, 2026 and close on March 31, 2027 at 11:59 pm Pacific. You can edit your entry until the deadline.
U.S. citizens 18 or older, wherever they live. We plan to open future years more widely.
Paintings only, made in 2024 or later. Within that, work shown before, entered in other competitions or even awarded elsewhere is fine. It must be yours, finished, handmade and available to exhibit if selected.
You do, both ways, as at most competitions. Each selected artist receives an honorarium of $100 to $250, depending on the size of the work, to help with the cost.
The Occidental Prize · Year one
This prize is for the artists who try. Free to enter, for works made in 2024 or later.
Who's the best painter you know? Tell them.
