By Shirley Higgins-Croft
The results of the Plain Dealer portrait competition have been announced in a ceremony today at L’Unico convention centre. The competition, open to kids ten years and under, attracted more than seventy thousand entries from 56 countries. Their brief was to produce a portrait of NRL legend, Brent Tate, whose story of pain, triumph and ultimate failure has captivated a half generation of sports fans.
The winning portrait, ‘In Vain‘ (pictured above), drawn by Melissa Murchison, 8, of Parramatta Park (below) was determined by the judges to have “captured the empty and doomed pursuit of that second premiership.”
Runner-up was Beyoncé Phelan, 9, of Machans Beach, who won the second prize of a medium-sized onion for her portrait (below) entitled “My Hero, My Tatey“.
Third prize winner, Margot Smyth-Pennington, 7, of Edge Hill was praised for her pencil sketch, “Tate trains on Trinity“, (below) but the work was criticised by judges as being “too carefree and filly-like”.
Trinity Beach Plain Dealer 