WESTFIELD — Blandford’s Maura O’Neill loves to draw. She never expected that she would be chosen for a highly competitive art exhibition.

“I was really surprised,” said O’Neill, a senior at St. Mary’s High School in Westfield. Sitting in homeroom one morning recently she heard the news during an announcement to the entire school. Her drawing was selected by the Emerging Young Artists Juried Exhibition — an annual art show hosted by the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMass-Dartmouth. It opened Jan. 21 and runs virtually until Feb. 6.

“It was so cool — I wasn’t expecting it. I was half asleep, but the announcement woke me right up,” she added.

The annual exhibition, now in its ninth year, recognizes the exceptional talent of students in high school art programs throughout New England. For the 2022 competition, 656 young artists submitted their work. From those entries, the college’s dean, A. Dean Lawrence Jenkens, selected 178 works of art.

O’Neill is the only St. Mary’s student who entered the competition. Students are allowed only one submission from a variety of media, including drawings, paintings, photography and ceramics. Her art teacher, Ellen Sullivan Farley, said this is the first time she can recall a St. Mary’s student being selected for a juried competition.

O’Neill said knowing that her drawing, called “Creepy Doll,” was awarded a slot in the art show has helped to validate her artistic skills.

“Art can be very frustrating,” she said. “Being selected for this exhibition reminded me that I’m not as bad as I thought I was. It’s also encouraged me to want to do more artwork.”

The 18-year-old, who lives in Blandford with her parents, Kelly and James O’Neill, said she became interested in art because of her father, who is an artist. She added that when she was little, he liked to sit with her and draw.
One Christmas, he gave her an old art set of his.

“It had some original drawing pencils and a few erasers. We often sat together to draw — he gave me some mini-art classes while I was in elementary school. He’s very talented. It was pretty awesome,” she recalled.

O’Neill has been a student at St. Mary’s since preschool. The school didn’t offer any art courses when she was in elementary school, other than a fourth grade after-school art program led by Sullivan Farley. It wasn’t until eighth grade that O’Neill took some of her first introductory art courses and became more motivated.

“I can’t think of a better person to get into this competition,” said Sullivan Farley. “I’m so proud of her.”

Her father said O’Neill has always been interested in art and drawing.

“I still have some of her finger paintings framed from when she was a toddler,” he recalled. “Through middle school and early high school, she would ask me to teach her how to use shading and shadows in her work.”

He added that as a kid, she always loved art kits and drawing books of horses and fairies. Later, she started to copy pictures and cartoons to create pencil drawings.

When O’Neill got to the high school, she became serious about art. She began taking art courses with Sullivan Farley as a sophomore, and connected with drawing. Sullivan Farley says O’Neill has passion and skill for art.

O’Neill became better at drawing and is now in an advanced drawing class. Her favorite subjects to draw are animals and people. “Drawing facial features and creating a character on a piece of paper that looks realistic is something I find very interesting,” O’Neill said.

When her teacher suggested last February that O’Neill create a still-life drawing from a real object, they chose a large, broken doll that has sat on a shelf in school’s art room for years.

“No one had drawn it before, so we thought that would be pretty cool to do. We fixed it up and put it on a chair so it wouldn’t fall over,” explained O’Neill.

The drawing, her first big art project, took about two months to finish. Once it was done, the drawing hung in the art room until she brought it home at the end of the school year. A digitized image was submitted for the young artists exhibition in mid-December.

Sullivan Farley said because the doll “gives everyone the creeps,” they called it Creepy Doll. She added that it now will “live in infamy” via O’Neill’s drawing.

“Maura did a fabulous job on ‘Creepy Doll,’” she added. “It appears serene, yet menacing at the same time, due to Maura’s composition featuring the doll sitting in a chair and gazing out at the viewer.”

Her parents are proud of their young artist. Kelly O’Neill called it “exciting” and “an honor” that her daughter’s drawing is part of the art show.

“Maura always has been talented in drawing, but working with Mrs. Sullivan Farley over the last few years has really enhanced her skills. She’s incredibly hard working. I can’t wait to see how her creativity and talent grow during college and beyond,” Kelly said.

Her father added that he’s told her many times how gifted she is to be able to draw pictures with great detail.

“Maura’s always humble about her work, and always excited while working on it,” he said.

This fall, O’Neill will enter Merrimack College, a private college in North Andover, to major in marketing and advertising. She hopes to use her creative talents in the business world after college as a creative director for selling products or creating small business websites.

“I’m not a hardcore artist — I do it to relax,” she said.