Brittney Washington awarded 2025 Griffith-Reyburn Lowcountry Artist of the Year

Coastal Community Foundation announced Brittney Washington as the 2025 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.

Brittney Washington is a portrait artist who uses primarily oil pastel, ink, and marker to create layered, luminous pieces blending realism and symbolic elements to evoke emotion and historical resonance. Her work is deeply rooted in storytelling, memory, and cultural preservation. Washington is largely self-taught, learning from fellow artists, oral historians, and cultural workers to guide her approach to storytelling. She co-founded the Lowcountry Arts Movement and The Ferrette House multi-disciplinary artist residency program. Washington’s formal training is in film production, and she has won first place awards at the Trident Technical College Student Film Festival and Atomacon Film Festival. She has also had her work featured on the cover of SURGE magazine and at the Gibbes Museum of Art.

For her Artist of the Year exhibition piece, Washington plans to launch a series titled Saltwater Lineage: Portraits of the Tides. This will be a collection of oil pastel portraits that honor the relationship between the Gullah Geechee people and the waterways that have sustained them for generations. Each piece will depict individuals whose lives are intricately connected to the tidal marshes, rivers, and estuaries of the Lowcountry using a rich, earth-toned palette of blues and greens to reflect the movement of water and resilience of these communities.

“As a Gullah Geechee descendant, it is deeply meaningful to have the opportunity to create work that uplifts my community’s history and relationship with the land and waterways of the Lowcountry,” said Washington. “This recognition allows me to continue honoring the resilience of my ancestors while engaging in critical conversations about environmental justice and land stewardship. The support of the Griffith-Reyburn Award not only provides the resources to bring this vision to life but also amplifies the importance of telling these stories at a time when our landscapes and traditions are increasingly at risk.”

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 the piece.

“The beauty of the Lowcountry Artist of the Year Award is that we see a broad scope of themes and disciplines highlighted,” said Coastal Community Foundation President and CEO Darrin Goss, Sr. “Over the past few years, we’ve featured sculpture, aerial landscape painting, textile work, intricate paper cutting, and now portraiture. These varied interpretations of our region show that the Lowcountry is not just one thing, but a compilation of our individual strengths and stories that make it thrive.”

In the fall of 2025 Coastal Community Foundation will host an event to unveil Washington’s new piece of art. It will remain the personal property of the artist to keep, show or sell at her discretion.

About Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina 

Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works to create communities rich in equity, opportunity and well-being by uniting people and investing resources so that all community members have a pathway to achieve their goals. The largest community foundation in South Carolina, Coastal Community Foundation’s service area includes Beaufort, Berkeley, Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester, Georgetown, Hampton, Horry and Jasper counties. Through our tools for long-term charitable giving, we help individuals, families, businesses and organizations be the reason why communities thrive in the nine counties we serve along South Carolina’s coast. To learn more, visit coastalcommunityfoundation.org or call (843) 723-3635.