The winning piece in this year's NY-27 Congressional Art Competition was executed with exemplary technical skill and creative energy, said Mary Jo Whitman, education/SCR director for GO Art!, and competition judge.
The winning painting was a self-portrait by Sarah Durkin, a senior at Iroquois High School. Whitman praised it its technical execution in part because of the difficulty of the medium, oil pastel.
"It's not just traditional portraiture but putting it in the setting and the way she executed the interior of the car, the complementary colors between the blues and the reds, the sunset in the car," she said. "It was just very well executed and had a kind of very postmodern feel to it."
Heller was unable to attend today's event because she was at a university accepting a scholarship.
Second place went to Kaylee Ziobro of Eden HS, and third to Kendall Heller, also of Iroquois.
Heller's painting will hang in the hallway that leads from the congressional office to the Capitol Building for a year, said Rep. Chris Jacobs, who was on hand to meet the young artists who entered the competition and present the awards.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story reversed the names of the first and third place winners. It's corrected now. The Batavian regrets the error.
