Art teacher Kinsey A. Lane won the award “Best Picture – Nature Category” in this year’s United Kingdom Coloured Pencil Society’s International Exhibition for her titled piece “Knight of the Savannah.”

Every year, Art Leagues and societies put out calls all around the world for artists to respond to and then a panel of judges juries the entries into an exhibition – The UK Coloured Pencil Society’s International Exhibition.

This year, the UK Coloured Pencil Society theme was “The Wild World” which asked for nature-themed pieces and Mrs. Lane’s entry was a white rhino.

“I start my piece by photographing animals, the subject of this piece is a white rhinoceros named ‘Mumbles’ from the Houston Zoo,” Lane said.

“It’s hard photographing animals for artwork because they are very far away and you can’t tell them what to do – they have to come up with the poses.
Colored pencil is also a very time-consuming medium. It took me several months to complete this piece working on and off.”

Lane’s husband, Jesse Lane, who is also an artist, won the ‘Best Pure Coloured Pencil’ Award in the exhibition.

“Our art is very different and though we enter many shows together, we have never both placed in the same show,” Kinsey Lane said. “It’s especially crazy when you consider out of all the artists around the world who enter, we both placed together.”

With the show moving to an online platform this year due to COVID-19, the competition was very steep.

“I was lucky to have been selected,” Lane said. “Winning this award means a lot to me because most of the artists who enter the show do not get in and very few of the pieces that get in win an award. I have been the artist who doesn’t get in many many times. It just goes to show that there is value when you continue to work at something.”

Lane’s creativity is not limited to her art.

“We can always count on Mrs. Lane to liven up school theme days with her extraordinary costumes,” art teacher Jen Lucas said. “ We’re lucky that she doesn’t reserve her creativity solely for her personal artistic practice but chooses to share it with everyone who passes through the art hall.”

Lane, a Highlander alumna herself, has been at TWHS since 2017.