Award-winning artists from Gorey Community School, Aoibheann Kinsella (Credit Union); Blaithin Cosgrave (Texaco) and Maeve O’Callaghan (Credit Union). 

A colourful painting by 14 year old Gorey Community School student, Bláithín Maura Cosgrave, has been chosen to illustrate a 2014 calendar published to mark the 60th anniversary the Texaco Children’s Art Competition which occurs next year.

Bláithín’s work, which will brighten up thousands of homes across Ireland during the month of September, is one of twenty works selected to illustrate the publication.

Entitled ‘Hawfinch’, it is a detailed wildlife study that a competition adjudicator said “so perfectly portrays the level of talent and skill that many young people possess and the high standard of art education being taught in Irish schools.”

Last year, Bláithín won a Special Merit Award in the competition.

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 T.D. (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.

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-1950s, 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.

Full story in THE GOREY ECHO.