Capturing art could be hard for many, but for three young ladies, the realm of art comes naturally to them. Three seniors at Freedom Area High School, Isabella Klenk, Madison Lavrusky and Renae Mohrbacher, got the opportunity to showcase their art outside the high school walls. Their art was showcased in the first-ever “Beaver County High School Senior Art Competition 2022.” 

Merrick Art Gallery in New Brighton, Pa., displayed the art of many Beaver County seniors from March 27 through April 9. The artwork was displayed in their main gallery and was open not only to the selected seniors but also open to the public. This meant many could come and enjoy the artwork of these young adults.

Isabella Klenk

Klenk’s art, “Deadly Beautiful,” was a watercolor painting that received an honorable mention in the art show competition, but received many other awards from the community because of the impact it had on others.

Just recently, Klenk’s mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and was stuck in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Klenk created this artwork for her mother to capture the difficulties she and her family are going through during this hard time. 

To create this art, Klenk used butterfly wings to represent the lungs of her ill mother. One of the wings was purple, which represented a healthy lung, and the other wing was brown, which represented the lung that was filled with cancer. Around the butterfly, she drew flowers to show that you can make anything beautiful, no matter the situation. 

“Art is a way, for me, to express myself and relax. I love drawing in my free time and at my own pace,” Klenk said.  

Madison Lavrusky

Lavrusky had two different artworks showcased in the competition. Her first piece of art was an acrylic painting that she completed in school for a project. When asked to choose an animal and create a close-up of that animal, Lavrusky chose to capture the image of a fish. She used many different colors to make a vibrantly colored fish. 

Her second piece of artwork was a charcoal drawing of Sheldon Cooper, which is a well-known character from the show Big Bang Theory. She picked the character to draw because she likes him a lot and finds him funny, and also because his picture included many key features to portray in the drawing.

Lavrusky has taken art for the past three years, and this year, all her artwork came from the contributions she has made in Advanced Art. 

“Art lets me express myself; it makes me happy when I have time to draw or paint. My art classes have made me more of a creative person,” Lavrusky said.

Renae Mohrbacher

Along with Lavrusky, Mohrbacher also had two pieces of artwork showcased at the event. Mohrbacher’s Timothee Chalamet charcoal portrait and her realism bee painting were amongst the other Beaver County Seniors’ artwork. 

Her bee painting is an acrylic realism painting that involves a canvas and paints. Mohrbacher did this because she loves painting nature; this was also a photo that had a lot of blur to it as well as close detail, which makes for a great realism painting. 

Mohrbacher chose her charcoal portrait because Timothee Chalamet is one of her favorite actors and his facial structure is perfect with all of the shadows necessary. For her charcoal art, she used different variants of charcoal in the scale of darkness to create the artwork. 

 “I would say that art represents me by showing my creative side and it can often show emotion. For me, art has been an outlet and it makes me feel relaxed because it is something that uses the creative part of my brain,” Mohrbacher said. “Art changed my high school experience just by being the class that I looked forward to the most every year; it is a sort of fresh air away from the stressful school work that needs to be completed.”

These three seniors, Klenk, Lavrusky and Mohrbacher, all showed much more than just art in their contributions to the Merrick Art Gallery’s Art Show. They not only used the techniques they have gained throughout their experiences with art to showcase much more than emotions but also to capture a story from within untold meanings.