Five Galway pupils have won top prizes in this year’s 66th Texaco Children’s Art Competition.
All five were winners of Special Merit Awards for artworks which the final adjudicator Professor Declan McGonagle said were ‘imaginative and displayed high levels of skill’.
The Galway winners were Emma Harris (18), from St. Brigid’s College in Loughrea; Gagik Barcegyn (13) from St. Joseph’s Special Needs School in Newcastle; Finn Conway (9), a pupil at St. Conleth’s National School, Tuam; and Aslam Akbari (7) and Jonas Whyte (9), both from Tuam Educate Together National School.
No strangers to the Texaco Children’s Art competition, Emma, Jonas and Finn have all won prizes on previous occasions. Last year, Emma won third prize in the 16-18 years age category and a Special Merit Award in 2018. Jonas and Finn both won Special Merit Awards in 2019 and 2018 respectively.
With the onset of Covid-19, the competition had to be extended over a longer period this year with delays to the final adjudication process and the announcement of winners.
As a result, activities normally undertaken during April and May – traditionally, the introduction of winners to the media and the formal presentation of prizes – had to be set aside as a consequence of which prizes will be delivered by hand without the possibility of an awards ceremony.
