A stay-at-home mother has won $200,000 (£124,450) for her huge 40 foot mural done entirely with pencil.
Adonna Khare, 32, spent more than three weeks finishing off her mural of animals in the gallery as people came to view the artworks in competition ArtPrize at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Ms Khare of Burbank, California, created the 8x35 foot mural in her garage and said the animals reflected her life and the people in it.
She then hung the mural in the gallery for the competition on September 9 and made additions to it as people passed by until it grew to 13 feet high and 40 feet long.
The emerging artist and elementary school art teacher had taken three years off at the birth of her daughter Kinsey who is now three-years-old.
According to the Los Angeles Times she said: ‘I needed a goal, and I wanted to experience ArtPrize.
‘I honestly didn't think I stood a chance.’
The amazing artwork which features a menagerie of exotic animals, Ms Khare said the mural, entitled Elephants, is very personal.
She said: ‘It's kind of a biography of my life transplanted into animals.
‘Sad things like loss and sickness, and happy things like the birth of my daughter.’
Ms Khare said an orangutan hooked up to medical equipment represented her young nephew who was diagnosed with diabetes, reflecting ‘the sickness of a child, and what it means to inflict pain in order for somebody to survive’.
Her additions were influenced her first long separation from her daughter. They were reunited along with her husband Eliot on October 8 when they flew in for the awards ceremony.
Ms Khare finished a masters degree in fine arts in 2006 and has shown her carbon pencil drawings at two galleries in the past but remained among the ranks of little-known and underpaid artists until she won the prize.
There were 16 winning artists who received $560,000 in prize money from the initial 1,517 entrants from 56 countries. Ms Khare won the biggest prize for the people’s choice award in the arts in the competition launched by Rick DeVos, from Amway Corp in 2009.
source: dailymail
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