UMOCA Announces Elizabeth Malaska as Winner of 2025 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) and the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation are pleased to announce that Portland-based artist Elizabeth Malaska has been awarded the 2025 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. This prestigious biennial prize, made possible by the Doctorow Foundation, includes a $15,000 unrestricted cash award and a solo exhibition of Malaska’s work at UMOCA from September 26, 2025, through January 3, 2026.

Elizabeth Malaska (b. 1978, Portland, OR) earned her BFA from California College of the Arts and her MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, winner of the 2022 Betty Bowen Award, as well as a recipient of a Painter’s and Sculptor’s Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and a Hallie Ford Fellowship from The Ford Family Foundation. Malaska’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, the Schneider Museum of Art, and the Hallie Ford Museum. Her art has been featured in Ms. Magazine, Art in America, ArtForum, and ArtMaze, among others.

Jared Steffensen, UMOCA Curator of Exhibitions, remarks, “UMOCA is honored to award Elizabeth Malaska the 2025 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. We look forward to sharing her thoughtful, layered, and emotionally resonant paintings with our Utah community.”

Suzanne Larson, daughter of Catherine Doctorow, added, “From the beginning, the Catherine Doctorow Prize has recognized artists who push the boundaries of painting. The Doctorow Family Foundation is thrilled to continue this tradition by awarding Elizabeth Malaska the prize this year.”

Malaska’s paintings explore themes of protection, vulnerability, and transformation, blending figures, symbols, and mythological elements. By layering paint in varying treatments—some more focused, others more obscured—she creates intricate textures and a collaged aura, as though the elements are stitched together in a dreamlike state, inviting viewers to explore the emotional depth and symbolic meaning within her work. Her practice is influenced by a wide range of sources, merging contemporary techniques with references to mythology, the natural world, and the human form. Malaska’s work is driven by an interest in the complexities of identity, as well as the interplay between strength and softness, protection and surrender, and the ways these themes intersect with the body and its symbolism.