Artist: Fiona Hamer
Lakeville North High School senior Fiona Hamer’s self-portrait earned an Honorable Mention at the Minnesota Scholastic Art Awards last spring. “I worked on this piece over the course of a few months, starting with a sketch, then focusing on the eyes and filling out the other details from there,” Fiona writes in an artist statement. “I used charcoal, a blending pencil and an eraser to create highlights, then filled in the background to make the face more prominent. It was important to me to make the features as realistic as possible, and the large size meant I had to frequently move further away to view it as a whole. I really enjoyed the challenge of a self-portrait of this size, though as the title implies, I always feel there is room for improvement.”
Title: The Critic
Artist: Fiona Hamer
Medium: charcoal drawing
Scale: 3×4 feet
Awards: Normandale Award of Excellence (Best in Show) at the South Suburban Conference Visual Arts Exhibit; Honorable Mention at the Minnesota Scholastic Art Awards
Grace Olson is the director of communications and public relations at Lakeville Area Schools.
