A total of eleven Clare students have won top prizes in this year’s 70th Texaco Children’s Art Competition.
In the 16-18 year age category, Eimear Fitzgerald (age 16), a pupil at Ennis Art School, won third prize for her work entitled ‘Best Friends’. Her double portrait is described by Final Adjudicator, Gary Granville, Professor Emeritus of Education at the National College of Art and Design as ‘very effective in expressing relationships’. “It’s a joyous celebration of life, through the relationship between woman and dog (and flat-white coffee!),” he added.
In the 9-11 year age category, Emily Coffey (11), a pupil at C.B.S. Ennis, won first prize for her artwork entitled ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’. Emily’s piece is described by Professor Granville as “an intergenerational themed portrait in which we can certainly see the emotion expressed in her image.”
In the 7-8 year age category, Sinéad Azkorbebeitia (8), from Ennis Art School, won first prize for her self-portrait – in which Professor Granville said she “uses the trees that frame her to great effect”.
In addition, eight Clare winners each won Special Merit Awards for artworks that Professor Granville said ‘demonstrated high levels of skill and imagination’.
They were Riya Mahesh (11) from C.B.S. Ennis and – all from Ennis Art School – Sienna Duggan (17); Haley Dixon (15); Eoin Murphy (11); Aoibhe Gleeson (11); Anna Tulty (8); Michael Ryan (8) and Sara McHugh (8).
No strangers to the Competition, Sarah won second prize in the 7-8 year age category last year, whilst Sienna, Eoin and Riya all won Special Merit Awards last year.
The Texaco Children’s Art Competition is popularly regarded as the longest-running sponsorship in the history of arts sponsoring in Ireland, with an unbroken history that dates back to the very first Competition held in 1955. This year, as has been the case throughout its life, it has been a platform on which young artists from Clare and counties throughout Ireland have had their talents recognised and their creativity commended.
