The Vault: Rebecca King Hawkinson - Les Beaux

Twenty-three years ago, in Nîmes, France a young American stood in a narrow aisle of a French hardware store with “Couleurs & Vernis” etched on the window. She opens a drawer and sees bright powdered pigments in all the colors she has seen spread across the canvases of the Impressionist painters in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She purchases scoopfuls of different pigments and takes them back to the studio with her mentor, a famous fresco master. The colors go into landscapes of the French countryside and later, of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the young woman’s home near Montreat, North Carolina.

American Artist Rebecca King Hawkinson was as an apprentice of Benjamin Long IV, an apprentice to Pietro Annigoni.
Artist Rebecca King Hawkinson’s paintings have been housed in private collections in the US and abroad since 1999. In 1998, King left high school early to study at Montreat College in Black Mountain, NC. Subsequently, in the same year American Artist and Fresco Master Benjamin Long IV completed his fresco on the Montreat College campus entitled, The Prodigal Son. Hawkinson began to study with Long in 1999. In addition, Hawkinson began landscape painting in 1999 on a five week trip to Long’s studio in the South of France.

In December the same year, she married Paul Nathan Hawkinson. At this time, she began showing her work in solo and groups shows. In addition, she worked as a studio assistant to Long, a fresco apprentice, and as a color assistant. Then, in subsequent years, Hawkinson returned to Europe to create many more works of art.

Hawkinson taught drawing and oil painting from 2005-2012 at the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas in Asheville. Not only was she teaching, but in 2008 Hawkinson gave birth to a son, Ezra Laurin Hawkinson. She traveled with her young son and her mother to paint for the first time in Ireland. In 2010, Hawkinson gave birth to a daughter, Eden Hope, then completed a large commission in 2011. She prepared to return to Italy for a spring. Later she took a fall painting trip to Fiesole outside of Florence.

Hawkinson gave birth to a third child, Orin Ransom in 2012. The next year, Hawkinson began traveling in the US to paint in new locations including Carmel, CA. In 2015, Hawkinson’s poem “The Golden Days are Numbered” was published by Mothers Always Write, an online journal of poetry and essays on Motherhood. Hawkinson gave birth to twin girls, Ayla Brynne and Tessa Grace in 2015. Paul and Rebecca Hawkinson completed construction on a hand built wooden studio and home designed by Rebecca in Black Mountain, NC in 2016. Carolina Home + Garden article “Unstill Life” by Tom Kerr in April of 2016 featured Artist Rebecca King Hawkinson and her art in 2016. Asheville Made featured Rebecca King Hawkinson on the cover and centerfold in an article by Kay West entiltled, “Yearning after the Microlocal Moment” of their November issue of 2021.

Artist Rebecca King Hawkinson maintains a working studio practice in Black Mountain, teaching students, making new paintings, and taking portrait commissions. The artist regularly still travels to Europe to paint in the countryside. This April the artist returns to the South of France to create new works of art.

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