Clúdach: Cover

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Now in its fifth decade, the annual Texaco Children’s Art Competition has attained the status of an institution in Irish life, and over the course of 2011 we will present four recent winners on the covers of our journal—clearly, only a tiny fraction of the young artistic talent in the country, as the competition attracts approximately 30,000 entries each year, in six age categories and also a special needs category. The image on our Summer cover, a mixed collage and watercolor composition titled “Birdie,” is the work of Emma Mcinerney, who was a six-year-old student at Dunboyne Junior Primary School in Dunboyne, County Meath when it was selected as the winning entry for the Six Years and Younger category in the 2010 competition.

We encourage readers to visit the extensive website of the competition at http://www.texacochildrensart.com/. The site includes much more information on the contest and its history, and dozens of attractive full-color images of winning entries from the current and previous contests. (One of the more interesting sidelights noted there is the significant number of established Irish artists who won the competition long before their adult fame—among them Dorothy Cross, Graham Kuttel, Robert Ballagh, and the fashion designer Paul Costello. The novelist Clare Boylan is also a past winner.)

We congratulate Emma Mcinerney, and thank Chevron (Ireland) Limited, the sponsors of the competition, and especially brand specialist Annemarie Barnes, for kind assistance in providing this and other cover images, and for help in preparing our cover notes.