page_title: Brent Funderburk
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Brent Funderburk / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: "Today" has won several national exhibition awards, including First Prize in the Rocky Mountain Watermedia National Competition in 2015. Was also featured in the international publications Creative Quarterly and Studio Visit.
context_page_description: Thomas Brent Funderburk is an awarded visual artist and W. L. Giles Distinguished Professor of Art at Mississippi State University where he has worked for over three decades receiving top academic honors for faculty, teaching and research excellence. He is known in the American art scene for his countless illustrated-lecture performances and workshops, as well as for many exhibitions of his complex, colorful watercolors and other visual artwork, which have taken place over the years at universities, galleries, museums and related centers across the U.S.. His art has been repeatedly featured in specialized art magazines. Funderburk is married to choreographer/dancer Deborah Funderburk. They have two sons, Wyatt and Jackson.
context_section_description: Funderburk graduated from East Carolina University School of Art and Design (Greenville, NC), where he gained his Bachelor's (BFA) and Master's (MFA) degrees in Fine art/Painting in 1975 and 1978 respectively.
  He taught art at Nebraska Wesleyan University before joining the faculty at Mississippi State University, where he has remained since, stepping up the academic ladder from instructor (1982) to his current position as Distinguished Professor in the College of Architecture, Art, and Design’s Department of Art, which he headed from 1995 to 2002. Apart from his regular work as a teacher of painting and drawing and as thesis advisor at MSU, Funderburk has conducted illustrated lecture performances, art workshops, and exhibitions in galleries and museums in many U.S. cities such as Jackson, MS, Ocean Springs, MS, Chattanooga, TN, Memphis, TN,  Golden, CO, Raleigh, NC, Charlotte, N.C. Punta Gorda, FL and Houston, TX, as well as in seven Chinese museums.
  Particular success accompanied Funderburk's watercolor series New Solar Myths and Flying World, both featured in Watercolor Artist magazine  (August 2016). New Solar Myths was on display at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, MS in 2014. It was also included among works by 25 artists from around the world chosen to appear in the fine art category of Creative Quarterly: The Journal of Art and Design’s Best 100 Annual 2015. Having been on display at the 2015-16 International Watercolor Biennial at Shenzhen, China, Flying World was among 150 works included in a large competitive exhibit of water-based painting media which travelled to several Chinese museums. On this occasion Funderburk’s piece was chosen out of only 36 U.S. artist-produced works—from among nearly 3,800 entries submitted worldwide.
  Additionally, Funderburk’s watercolor/mixed-media painting A Dream of Flying was among more than 100 works—out of 430 submitted entries—chosen for the Houston, Texas-based Watercolor Art Society’s 2016 International Exhibition held in March 2016.
caption: Brent Funderburk, "Today", watercolor on paper, 36" x 34'", 2009, private collection
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