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A George Rogers Clark High School student’s painting dedicated to the memory of her late grandmother earned her a recent meeting with Congressman Andy Barr.

16-year-old Anna DeCapio, a freshman, at GRC entered the 2022 6th District Congressional Art Competition sponsored by Barr’s office. The contest is held yearly each spring by the offices of each member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The winners from each district have their work displayed in their representative’s office for a whole year.

DeCapio got to meet the multi-term Republican congressman last Wednesday at a reception held on the University of Kentucky’s campus.

“It was pretty cool,” DeCapio said about the reception. “Andy Barr talked about how he liked art and how he wanted to do architecture. He talked to us about that and told us to never stop doing art.”

DeCapio’s piece, “Rest in Peace My Beautiful Hummingbird”, honored her late grandmother, Janine Voros.

“My grandmother really liked hummingbirds and flowers,” DeCapio said. “I’m not really good with painting and I thought I would go outside of my comfort zone with acrylic painting. She always wanted me to paint and do something different. So I thought that I would do that.”

The painting depicts a shadowed hummingbird investigating a bush at sunset.

DeCapio is a lifelong art lover.

“I like how you can make it your own and you put meaning into it; even if other people don’t understand it, you understand it and it is a way to help yourself with mental health and deal with things because you can put how you are feeling and express your feelings into art,” she said.

She prefers to explore the medium with pastels, graffiti and sketches, and though her submission to the contest features a dazzling array of colors, DeCapio’s works are usually void of color.

“I don’t really like putting color into anything because it is so much work and I’m impatient,” she said.