UPDATED WITH STORY: Baton Rouge artist with local roots wins festival poster competition

Genevieve Breckoff is now a two-time winner in the Louisiana Shrimp & Petroleum Festival poster and pin competition.
This time, Breckoff gets the festival, too.
Breckoff, a Baton Rouge resident whose mother comes from Patterson, won with her brightly colored acrylic work showing three big shrimp, each wearing a yellow hardhat emblazoned with an oil well logo.
“This year, I wanted to have some fun with it,” Breckoff said after the poster was unveiled during the Bayou BBQ Bash kick-off at Holiday Inn Express & Suites.
She won the poster competition in 2021. But the Labor Day weekend that year fell during the Delta wave of COVID, which hit St. Mary hard. The festival was cancelled for the second straight year.
“I didn’t get the chance to do all the festival things,” Breckoff said.
But she came back with her fiancé, who is from Mississippi, for the 2022 festival.
“He had a blast at the parade,” Breckoff said.
They’re planning an April wedding.
Breckoff knew the festival well from her childhood.
“It was always something that we grew up with,” she said.
So was art.
“I’ve been painting since I could stand up, basically,” Breckoff said.
She attended an arts-oriented high school in Baton Rouge. But when she went on to LSU, she studied not art, but psychology.
Now Breckoff is a clinical research coordinator for the Tulane Medical School.
“It sounds a lot snazzier than it is,” she said. “Basically, I read surveys.”
Her schedule revolves around appointments, and her work on the 2024 festival poster was sandwiched around them.
“It’s my primary stress relief,” Breckoff said.
This year’s Shrimp & Petroleum Festival will be Aug. 29-Sept. 2.