Down Student's Tiger Painting Selected For Texaco 2014 Calendar

A painting by 13-year old Down student, Abigail McVeigh, a pupil at Ardmore House Special School in Downpatrick, has been chosen to illustrate a 2014 calendar published to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Texaco Children’s Art Competition which occurs next year.

Her work, which will brighten up thousands of homes across Ireland, is one of twenty works selected to illustrate the publication. Entitled ‘My Dad Loves Tigers more than Football’, it is a delicately composed wildlife study that a competition adjudicator said “so perfectly portrays the richness of a child’s imagination.” Last year, Abilgail won a Special Merit Award in the competition.

Being distributed through Texaco service stations, the full colour, page-per-month calendar is first of a series of undertakings planned by Texaco to mark an event that ranks as Ireland’s longest running sponsorship. Launched in the mid-50s, the Texaco children’s art competition has been held annually ever since during which time it is believed to have touched the lives of virtually every family in Ireland.

With entries averaging 30,000 each year, it is estimated that almost two million students have participated in the Competition of whom its more notable past winners include Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn TD (a four-times winner), artists Bernadette Madden, Dorothy Cross, Graham Knuttal and Robert Ballagh, fashion designer Paul Costello, broadcasters Thelma Mansfield and Terry Prone, ICTU General Secretary David Begg, the late novelist Clare Boylan, actress Jean Anne Crowley and musician Ethna Tinney.