This is my third attempt to send this! A wee bitty long retrospective: Jump back to 1942 when I attended Balornock Elementary School (now Primary School), in North-east Glasgow, when a few of us talented weans were chosen by our teacher to compete in the Glasgow Corporation Art Competition for Glasgow Children. We were told to bring our own water if we were going to paint water colours. Master watercolourist that I was (☺), I considered a bottle that had once held castor oil big enough for my artistic needs, stuck it in my trench coat pocket and off I went with high hopes to be the forerunner of Jack Vettriano of "The Singing Butler" fame! . Now I am "name-dropping" some more when I mention trench coat as to own one in my generation was equivalent to wearing a top brand name nowadays. This navy-blue trench coat was purchased at great financial sacrifice to my mother as she didn't want me going to this art competition looking like a rag picker. Preening like a peacock wearing my new trench coat and with the bottle of water in my pocket, nothing for it but that the handpicked classmate/artists and I should travel on the top deck of the bus to Kelvingrove Art Galleries...but michty me! (to quote Oor Wullie as I hadn't learned to swear yet!), when we came clattering down the stairs of the bus I smashed the bottle of water, spilling the contents and shards of glass inside the pocket of my "top drawer" trench coat. Upon our arrival at the art galleries we were given time to walk around the different displays that we might want to copy. I can't remember if we had to copy something or if we could freelance, all I know is that I chose to paint a parrot. A parrot! It wasn't even a stuffed parrot, but a painting. As an eleven-year-old I had no idea about the skeleton of a bird, as I wouldn't even touch our budgie when I found it upended on its spar in the cage, in a state of rigor mortis having gone to Budgie World during the night! Nothing venture, nothing gain. I chose to paint the parrot. I assume that brushes and clean water/receptacles were supplied, a minor point missing in my memory, for how else would I have been able to paint a "reasonable facsimile thereof" of the bright, unmuddied-looking feathers of the parrot? However, there were buckets of water outside the room, presumably for dirty paint water. See, this is why you need to have good historians...and genealogists... to get the facts right. I laboured at that painting of the parrot as if my life depended upon it, but in retrospect I think it might have qualified better as a reasonable facsimile of the bald eagle, America's national emblem I didn't win a medal, I didn't win a certificate, I didn't even get an also ran, and I didn't even get my wonderful masterpiece returned! In later years, it took me a while, and belatedly, to appreciate the time and talent it took to execute a very good oil painting of Balcary House and Bay looking out to Hestan Island done by my father's second cousin, James Clint. This painting had come into the hands of a gentleman in Dalbeattie, and much as I admired it, I was unappreciative of the £150 asking price, with the comment that that was nothing to an American. Well, ah wisnae an American, but a Glesga-born "wee keelie" who, when she left Glasgow in 1954, earned no more than £16 a month. I demurred being held up for a king's ransom and left the family oil painting hanging above a blazing fireplace in this man's house which was also choc-a-bloc with antiques. Incidentally, over the last 30 years I have tried to track down this particular painting, but to no avail. There is another painting by James Clint hanging in Auchencairn House. It is of the same genre as the one I saw in the house in Dalbeattie. Whatever artistic genes may have been floating around in the Clint-Hyslop tree haven't been passed on to me, though. Not even my enthusiasm to paint a parrot at the Glasgow Corporation Art Competition for Glasgow Schoolchildren garnered as much as an also-ran.. Thanks for the memory your posting elicited when I was a wee lassie growing up in Glasgow, and for the family painting that got away from me in Doonhamer country. Maisie ----- Original Message ----- From: "deborah robertson" <drobertson26@btinternet.com> To: "ian middleton" <immiddleton@yahoo.co.uk>; <SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 2:59 AM Subject: Re: [WIG LIST] Award for drawing. > Hello > > The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Musuem in Glasgow holds an Annual > Corporation Drawing Competition for Glasgow children, it began in 1904. > http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/page.cfm?venueid=4&itemID=3 > > This is a quote from > http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/kelvingrove/recollections/recollections_detail.asp?catid=3 > > [The proudest moment as a scholar at Shawlands Acadamy, Glasgow, was > representing my school at the annual Corporation Drawing Competition in > the Kelvingrove Gallery. This event was open to all school children within > Glasgow. To my surprise I was awarded a bronze medal for my artistic > contribution to this event. I still display my medal with pride 46 years > after. > > Ross, Orkney ] > > > > >

.This thread has reminded me that I too took part in the drawing competition - 1960 I think. I was chosen with a couple of others in my class to represent my school (St. Sixtus primary in Drumchapel). I had a similar exprerience to Maisie - except I had to draw a stuffed monkey! Memories! Bill Kelly