News

Kerry Sullivan’s Halloween drawing ‘Smile’ was honored with a national gold medal in competition. Artwork provided

By Faran Fagen

In elementary school, Kerry Sullivan thought hard about which crayons to use to illustrate the features of her many “My Little Pony” characters. Each page of computer paper represented a canvas of possibilities.

Now at 18 years old and with accolades accumulating, the Hypoluxo Island resident and graduate of Dreyfoos School of the Arts is attending the Rhode Island School of Design painting visual arts degree program.

“I hope to develop my technical art-making skills as well as my conceptual art-making skills,” Sullivan said. “I’m very dedicated to my craft and willing to spend hours upon hours perfecting it and learning as much as I can. A career path in the visual arts is something that has become clearer and clearer to me over the past couple of years.”

In 2023, Sullivan won the Palm Beach and Martin counties Pathfinder first-place award for visual arts and became a National Society of Arts and Letters finalist for painting. She also attended the RISD pre-college program.

Ever since the seventh grade, Sullivan has entered her artwork into various competitions and gallery openings. She was awarded “best in show” at the Broward Art Guild in 2017 and 2018 and started seeing her work showcased in gallery settings.

Around the same time, she began entering her artwork in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition and has received 48 regional accolades through this program.
After her “My Little Pony” drawings, Sullivan realized that “the process of creating art was deeply fulfilling for me, as I was able to focus on an idea and try to visually depict it on paper.”

She would gaze at the fashion magazines belonging to her mother, Kathy, and would think to herself, “I want to draw this, and I want to make it look real.” She’d spend hours studying an image and trying to replicate it on paper.

Throughout elementary school, she had an art teacher, Denise Calderaro, who introduced different types of paint that was water soluble and nontoxic. Starting in the fifth grade, she provided a variety of acrylic paints and nicer brushes, which really made Sullivan fall in love with the medium.

“From that point on, I was making regular trips back and forth from Michaels craft store to buy my own acrylic paints and to further develop this newfound passion for painting,” Sullivan said.

Her biggest obstacle in high school was the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. She attended school online for sophomore year.

But Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts gave Sullivan a space to create her work surrounded by the materials and resources she needed. She created the drawing Smile to be submitted for a Halloween assignment. She hoped to express how scary things were during the pandemic and show the frustrations and anxiety people were feeling. She used herself as the model since classes were still being held remotely.

“I aimed to just create something scary, but as I continued the piece, I was reminded of why I started drawing in the first place,” Sullivan said. “I felt a great deal of satisfaction when I was able to transfer my ideas onto paper and depict them realistically and visually.”

At the start of 2021, the piece won a Scholastic Art and Writing Awards gold key for this region and a national gold medal.

Toward the end of her senior year at Dreyfoos, Sullivan was awarded the Elayne and Marvin Mordes Scholarship, as well as the Constance Rudy painting award by the school’s foundation.

Her parents, Kathy and Robert, and brothers, Kevin and Harris, are huge supporters.

“The most important thing was figuring out the path to meet her goal which included Bak Middle School and Dreyfoos School of the Arts,” her mother said. “Pursuing that path of an education in visual arts plus her persistence through the COVID years was very important.”

In college, Kerry hopes to gain a new perspective on creating, viewing and understanding different works.

“I want to be able to explore the art world with a more creative lens, as well as incorporate that same creativity into everything I do,” she said. “Wherever I end up, I will be happy to pursue a career in the arts.”