CCA artist’s futuristic work wins Congressional Art Competition

Elizabeth Yang, a 16-year-old junior at Canyon Crest Academy, recently won Rep. Scott Peters’ Congressional Art Competition. Her painting will hang on display at the capitol in D.C. for a year, representing the 50th District.

“I was in a state of shock,” said Eiizabeth of her win, which includes a round trip airfare to Washington D.C. next month to attend a reception honoring her work. “I was wondering if it was real or if I was in a dream.”

Elizabeth’s piece is titled “Fly to the Future” and features a young girl blazing on a hoverboard against a scenic skyline.

Elizabeth Yang

(Elizabeth Yang)

“One of my main inspirations was ‘Back to the Future II’, when they go to 2015 and they have that pink flying hoverboard,” she said. “I found that to be such an interesting concept and a good representation of the future. Many people wish that type of overboard existed!”

The skyline was inspired by downtown San Diego and took a long time to get the buildings just right, painting in her makeshift studio space in her family’s garage.

Elizabeth has been interested in art since she was young, “I always found art to be very fun and creative and a way to express myself in a way that I can’t with words.”

She first started out with drawing, pencil and charcoal, and then moved into painting in mediums like acrylic, watercolor and gouache, a mix between watercolor and acrylic paints.

This year, she expanded on her skills in Damien DeMarco’s painting class at Canyon Crest. She found it to be helpful, learning a lot of different techniques. DeMarco gave a lot of different assignments that got Elizabeth to explore surrealism and abstract, atmospheric perspective quality and learn about perspective for portraits.

“CCA offers a lot of art class opportunities for students that are passionate about art,” said Elizabeth, who has been accepted into CCA’s Art Conservatory next year.

While in Conservatory, she also plans to take two other art classes: AP 3D Art and a seminar in the spring. She hopes the art classes will be a relaxing way to combat a stressful school workload and college applications.

On her own future, although everyone asks, Elizabeth is still very undecided—“There’s so many options, it’s very daunting to choose one path for the future.”

She is interested in physics and math, subjects not often associated with art. She thinks it’s a good thing that she is interested in developing both sides of her brain and two very different ways of thinking.