Coastal Community Foundation is proud to announce Katelyn Chapman as the 2026 Griffith-Reyburn Lowcountry Artist of the Year. The award supports the creation of new artwork representing the look and feel of the South Carolina Lowcountry’s lifestyle, culture, or environment.
The Lowcountry Artist of the Year award was established at Coastal Community Foundation in 2003 by Mike Griffith and Donna Reyburn. The $6,000 grant is intended to cover the artist's living expenses during the creation of an exhibition piece.
“The Griffith-Reyburn Lowcountry Artist of the Year Award is an example of creative collaboration between the Foundation and donors,” said President and CEO Darrin Goss, Sr. “Mike and Donna came to us with a dream of supporting emerging Lowcountry artists, and this grant has elevated the careers of more than 20 artists in our region.”
The 2026 Artist of the Year, Katelyn Chapman, is an oil painter who focuses on the American South’s rural working class. Her still life paintings draw from a rich history and provide perspectives on larger societal issues. Chapman works within the genres of realism, regionalism, trompe-l'œil, and Southern Gothic, and she has started to explore the ways she can use the shape of containers and surfaces as framing devices for her paintings. She paints in life-size ratios that provide a heightened sense of intimacy and realism for the viewer and allow her audience to be an active participant in the scenes before them.
For her Artist of the Year exhibition, Chapman plans to create a series of life-size tondos (circular paintings), depicting bird's-eye views of 12-gallon buckets and 55-gallon drums containing imagery symbolic of the Lowcountry, particularly its everyday working-class culture, and framing them with salvaged handles from their original objects. This series will give voice to a unique side of this region that is often overlooked in the tourist economy and explore the duality of the things we carry—both sustaining and burdensome.
Chapman has a BFA in Drawing from Clemson University, an MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Georgia, and is a three-time awardee of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant. She comes from a career in higher education, where she was a full-time Art Professor at The American College of the Building Arts.
“After making the decision to leave my full-time teaching job two and a half years ago to pursue my art career, it's incredibly validating to receive this award,” said Katelyn Chapman. “It reassures me that hard work and persistence pay off. It's evident that the selection committee sees the value in our region's storytelling, and I'm honored that they've chosen to support me in sharing my unique perspective.”
Later this year, Coastal Community Foundation will host a public event to unveil Chapman’s new artwork. It will remain the personal property of the artist to keep, show, or sell at her discretion.