Brave Island ran a competition to design a Christmas card to raise money for Ventnor Community Foodbank, we raised nearly £450 from selling the winning card! We chat to the winning designer 15 year old Sophie Corry.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you do when you’re not making art?

As a year 10 student, most of my time is spent studying for my GCSEs – I’m probably doing far too many of them. However, when not doing homework and revising for exams, I enjoy writing poetry. I suppose that does also count as making art, but the vast majority of my free time is spent creating in some way.

Your design is lovely, what inspired you to create it? Were you influenced by any particular artists or styles?

When it comes to artists, I would say this piece was inspired by Edward Hopper’s oil paintings – at least the tone and colours are. I absolutely adore the use of colours in his work, and wanted to try and recreate that in mine. Aside from this, the illustration was mostly based on walking home after a nativity in primary school. I remember being in the younger years of primary school, walking home after the christmas show, still in costume, and it being dark outside. I think for me, that is a very nostalgic christmas scene, so I decided to do an illustration of it.

Why did you decide to take part in this competition?

Mostly I wanted to take part in the competition as a way of getting my art out there. It seemed like a great opportunity to get one of my illustrations seen by more people, so I figured it was worth a shot – worst case scenario we print a couple for family Christmas cards! Seeing the amount of money raised last year for the Ventnor Foodbank, I thought it would be a really good thing to be involved with. 

And finally, we’d love to hear a bit about what you think of the Brave Island project.

I think the Brave Island project presents so many amazing opportunities for young people on the island. As someone on the younger end of the people Brave Island provides opportunities for, I’m only just beginning to find more that are applicable to me, but I’m really excited about possibly getting more involved in creative projects on the island. I do think it’s really important to give young people the insights into the creative arts that Brave Island now provides. There’s not really anything else like it on the island.