A TEENAGER from Skibbereen has won first prize in RTÉ’s This Is Art! competition.
Home-schooled Isabelle Prime was named the outright winner in the 12-to-15 age category for her surreal wildlife portrait entitled Wader.
‘As this was going to be an above and underwater scene, I decided on my favourite bird, the roseate spoonbill, a sea-wading bird,’ said the 14-year-old, who is self-taught in art.
Her acrylic on canvas painting depicts the bird wading in shallow water, looking for shrimps and fish.
There is a black and white banded sea snake circling around some coral and climbing up the spoonbill’s legs, while three Townsend’s warblers fly in to land on the spoonbill’s wings.
As a work of art, it is accomplished for one so young, and Isabelle spoke with delight about wanting to include her love of snakes in the painting.
‘I decided on a sea snake as I wanted a creature to live in the underwater part of my painting. I then added coral, fish, shrimps and the Townsend’s warblers as I was designing it,’ she said.
What makes the painting surreal is the combination of animals that normally would not be found together in nature, as well as the deeply vivid use of colour.
Isabelle explained that the black banded sea snake is found only around the islands of the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern hemisphere.
On the other hand, roseate spoonbills are found only on the western side of the Pacific ocean – the southern hemisphere – and on Atlantic coasts of North and South America.
‘I have always enjoyed painting and drawing,’ said Isabelle.
‘Ever since I was old enough to pick up a pencil, I knew that this was what I wanted to do in life. I started taking my art seriously when I was 10 years old, during lockdown, when they started showing Bob Ross’s painting series on TV,’ said Isabelle, who must find no end of inspiration at The Fernery botanical garden, which surrounds her home at Gorteenalomane, Skibbereen.
From that point on, she has been striving for realism. ‘I mostly started out painting landscapes, then portraits, and now I paint mainly wildlife, working in a large range of mediums,’ she added.
Isabelle is clearly creative but highly methodical too, having worked from dozens of different reference photos, trying to make them all fit harmoniously in one painting.
She said the painting took about one month to complete, finally finishing it at the beginning of October 2024 – just in time to take the top prize in the competition!
