St. John the Baptist Middle School student wins Art of Conservation Songbird Art Contest

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This painting by St. John the Baptist Middle School student Selina Dong won first place in the Wildlife Forever’s Art of Conservation Songbird Art Contest.

DRAPER — Selina Dong, 14, an eighth-grade student at St. John the Baptist Middle School, recently took first place in the seventh to ninth grade category in Wildlife Forever’s Art of Conservation Songbird Art Contest for her painting of a scissor-tailed flycatcher.

Selina has never before entered an art competition and was surprised when she won, she said.

Selina loves to draw and has been fond of sketching birds for several years, she said. She chose the scissor-tailed flycatcher out of five options presented by Wildlife Forever for her acrylic and gouache painting of the bird.

“I really liked the way it looked, like the long tail,” she said of the bird, which is found in the south-central United States, Mexico and Central America. “I thought it was really pretty. The palette isn’t really bright and it’s toned-down colors, and I really like those colors.”

She learned about the contest from her teacher Krista Kern, who encouraged all of her students to enter.

“She thought it would be a good idea for us to enter, whoever wanted to, since we were already practicing drawing birds in that class,” Selina said.

The flycatcher is one of the many beautiful works Selina has created in her painting coursework this year, Kern said. “She has an intuitive handling of the materials. The technique in which Selina painted this work was using a grid method after studying the late American artist Chuck Close.”

Before sketching and then painting the bird, Selina researched several images online before settling on one, she said. “I just found one that would be fun to paint, that was eye-catching to me.”

Selina’s mother Zhen Dong is very proud of her daughter, she said. “I’m very happy she got first place.”

Selina was the only first-place Utah winner in the international competition. Her classmate Savannah Gray took second place for Utah in the songbird competition; they both received certificates for their efforts.

Wildlife Forever, a nonprofit conservation charity, was founded in  1987 with the mission to “conserve America’s wildlife heritage through conservation education, preservation of habitat and management of fish and wildlife,” according to its website. The organization has funded numerous research and habitat restoration projects across North America, focusing on “preventing invasive species, connecting youth to the outdoors through the Art of Conservation, and habitat restoration through Prairie City USA,” the website states.

The Wildlife Forever Art of Conservation contest series, which includes the songbird contest and a fish art contest, was created to inspire and connect youth to the outdoors.