BRIAN REGO

About Brian Rego

Brian Rego was born in Santa Clara, CA in 1980. He received his BFA in Painting at the University of South Carolina in 2004 and was awarded the Ed Yaghjian Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Work. He received his MFA in Painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2007 and afterward co-founded the painting collective known as Perceptual Painters. In 2022 Rego had his work published in the book Art in the Making, Essays by Artists About What They Do, by the Fisher Press; and this year, Rego was awarded the Blackwell Prize in Painting from the University of West Georgia.

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Within the last fifteen years, Rego has taught at multiple institutions including the University of South Carolina, the University of Mississippi, the Jerusalem Studio School, Art New England, Beverly Street Studio School, and Mt. Gretna School of Art. In 2015, he co-founded the Midlands School of Art, which offered training in visual perception and the classical use of materials to a dynamic range of students. Currently, Rego works privately with painters from all over the world.

In his work, Rego combines imagination and memory with the sense of sight and components from the observable world to make his paintings. As he works directly from life and in the studio, his paintings result in the accumulation of personal experience and narrative that embody themselves as symbols of his interior world.

Awards and Honors

2023 The Blackwell Prize in Painting Award, University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA
2004 Ed Yaghjian Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Work, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
1998 Gold Key, The Scholastic Art and Writing Award for Excellence in Visual Arts, Lander University, Greenwood, SC