Fine Arts BFA student Finn Marks won the $5,000 grand prize at FIT’s The Brush Off: A Live Art Duel. The multiround, timed painting competition was held in the Art and Design Gallery on November 5. Chaired by FIT Foundation board member Jessica Resler, the event challenged eight student artists from the School of Art and Design to quickly paint in real time, on surfaces ranging from traditional canvases to designer clothing. After each round, the audience and judging panel voted on who would advance.
Marks secured first place by combining crowd-pleasing showmanship with distinctive self-expression: placing a canvas on the floor to step on it during the abstract round, and later, painting an electric-pink and blue crying baby on a live runway model.
“I am still recovering from shell shock,” Marks said after the event. “I was kind of nervous about this event—I’ve been crying a lot—so I decided to make the baby cry. The baby cried all the way to the back of the dress.”
“It’s a very unusual situation for artists to be in,” noted judging panelist Ben Davis, Artnet News’ national art critic. “It’s not actually great training to be a painter, but it’s great training to be an artist because it is high stakes. It’s about presentation and thinking on your feet.”
Davis, who judged the event alongside Jakob Angner of Christie’s and artist Lee Quiñones, explained that the panel evaluated the pieces based on how the students synthesized personal expression with the event’s themes and how successfully they made decisions under pressure.
Davis’ advice for up-and-coming creators was to lean into risk. “You should really be ready to genuinely experiment,” he said. “Find what you’re afraid of and steer into that. That’s where the opportunity is.”
The student artwork created during the event is now up for auction on the Behold World Art Exchange, the event sponsor co-founded by Alexa Calmi, Fashion Merchandising Management BS ’11. The app helps users discover work by emerging and established artists and build confidence in their taste. Brush Off guests could bid on artworks before they were finished and continue to browse and bid after the event.
“We’re excited to keep evolving the Behold experience by giving people new ways to discover, enjoy and connect with art,” Calmi says.
Proceeds from the auction benefit the FIT Foundation.