Grade 12, Colonel Gray, PEI

I make art because it’s the way I have always seen the world. My father is a very talented artist, and I grew up surrounded by art and I want to spend my entire life the same way. When I was four, my father was working on a long series of mixed-media abstract paintings, and he let me make marks on his artwork. Some paintings with my name or my brush strokes were in his show at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. This taught me that an artist can take risks and make works that are unusual and not conventional. It makes me feel like I can do anything I want in art.