‘I didn’t know he entered’ – mum’s pride as Tadhg (4) scoops art prize

A 17-year-old girl has become the first ever back-to-back overall winner of the Texaco Children’s Art Competition.

Charley Bell received the top prize of €1,500 for the second year in a row, winning this year with Anticipation, a coloured pencil portrait of an elderly woman.

“It took me about a month to complete. It’s called Anticipation, I’ve named it that because of her expression,” Charley said.

A student at Methodist College Belfast, Charley was introduced to art at a young age and gravitated towards portraits as she got older.

“I found the photo online. I was just looking for something that I knew would challenge me. It’s got a lot of emotion so that’s what I was searching for,” she said.

Charley said she was up until 3am on the day her work was due to be submitted, applying last-minute touches.

Head of the judging panel Gary Granville praised the piece as “an exceptionally well-executed portrait” that tells of an “aged serenity, of a full life with a wealth of experience and wisdom”.

Last year, Charley won with another portrait titled Curiosity, which depicted an elderly man.

She also received special merit awards in the competition in 2020 and 2021.

“I like working with portraits and when I saw this photo, the detailed expression on the woman’s face jumped out at me immediately. I knew it would be a challenging and interesting artwork to take on,” she said.

The youngest winner of this year’s competition was four-year-old Tadhg Traynor, from Drogheda, Co Louth, for his colourful painting Dog.

Proud mum Laobhaoise was as surprised as anybody to learn Tadhg had been crowned the winner as she learned he had entered the competition only after he had won.

“He did his painting in his minder Monica’s after-school,” she said.

“She was away on holidays and she texted us to say he’d won the competition.

“I didn’t know anything about it and he said, ‘Yeah, I did my painting of a dog’, and that’s all we heard.

“So we got the letter to come up and say he’d won first prize. We’re delighted, we’re so proud of him.

“He loves drawing. It’s his favourite thing to do and he loves painting especially.”

Tadhg said he did other paintings, including “the fireman’s helpers” and “a fireman car”, but “the doggy” was the favourite for the competition.

He was most excited to come up to Dublin for “my prize” and enjoyed taking a trip on the Luas.

The winning work in the 14-15 years category was a painting titled Unconditional Love.

Fifteen-year-old Darragh Granahan decided to turn an old photograph of himself with his mother Joanne into a painting, changing some of the colours to really make it “pop”.

“I knew I entered the competition, but I didn’t know what photo to use,” he said.

“I was rooting through the album books my mum kept for about a week. I found this photo, thought it was nice and decided to paint it.

“I wanted to reflect my childhood in a painting, using the bright colours to show the love.

“I was deciding what to name it and had a few ideas. I asked my mum and she said ‘Unconditional Love’, so I went with that.”