PSWC is proud to have provided recent scholarships to these extremely talented students pursuing a career in art.
Each year, we solicit high school art teachers, college art departments, statewide arts organizations and our members to help us find talented, dedicated students interested in pursuing a career in art at a junior or four-year college or university, or an accredited art school.
2025 Recipients
From 30 applications and five finalists, the PSWC Executive Committee has selected two recipients of our 2025 scholarships. The students who applied this year were from all over the country, from Puerto Rico to California, and included both high school and college students.
The Art of Alana Murray
Twenty-year-old Alana attends Florida State College at Jacksonville and will be applying her scholarship to further her art study at the University of Central Florida. In addition to exceptional technical ability, Alana demonstrated in her artist statement she has an artist’s heart. “Art has always appealed to me as a way to bring bright moments of happiness and connection to people,” she wrote. “One of my greatest influences, even outside of art but especially within it, is the sheer vibrancy of the life of everyday things. I genuinely squeal when I see a cobblestone bridge, or when I am taking a walk and the trees glow with sunlight.”
Alana has collected an impressive number of art recognitions from local associations and juried shows in addition to being recognized as an honors student in high school and college. The teachers who wrote letters of recommendation for Anna consistently reference her commitment to learning and growing as an artist. “Alana invested many hours of work in the studio,” wrote her painting professor who she credits for helping her become confident in her pursuit of a career in art. “She is at a point in her life where she’s taking her education very seriously as a pathway toward personal improvement,” the professor added.
The Art of Anna Hernández
Eighteen-year-old Anna attends the Escuela Especializada Central de Artes Visuales in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She plans to attend Iowa State University to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
She started painting at age six when she felt “images could capture what words sometimes fail to express.” One of her early art memories was “sitting with my father on our balcony with a sketchbook in hand, observing a flamboyán tree showering its pink petals on the sidewalk below. That moment of carefully painting each leaf, capturing every petal as it fell, was my first real observation exercise.” That painting still hangs in her family’s living room today. She has an inspiring career vision that includes becoming a certified professional makeup artist and opening an art studio where she would sell her works alongside other emerging Latino artists and provide internships to art students.
It is clear Anna will be a civic-minded artist, contributing to her community and helping other artists grow and succeed. As a partner of the Puerto Rico Museum of Art, she has shared her art talent as a volunteer for the museum’s “Art, Ecology and Sustainability Project” among several other volunteer activities. One of her professors wrote, “Her social commitment has been demonstrated through multiple hours of community service for different non-profit organizations. These have been very enriching experiences for her.”
2024 Recipients
This year we had 38 applicants from 18 different states, one from the UK and one from South Africa! Our finalists rose above the others with both impressive portfolios and outstanding letters of recommendation. Congratulations go to the 2024 Scholarship recipients, Marguerite Livezey from New Hope, Pennsylvania and Shane Adams from Wantagh, New York.
The Art of Marguerite Livezy
Marguerite Livezey is a senior at Solebury School. She will be attending Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in International and Public Affairs (at Brown) and Painting (at RISD). She is the recipient of a 2023 National Merit Scholarship Commendation, 2023 College Board Rural and Small-Town Recognition Award, 2023 AP Scholar With Distinction Award, 2020-23 Phillips Mill Youth Art Show – 2nd place award for “Works on Paper.” Marguerite is also an athletic MVP.
Her art teacher says of Marguerite, “It would be very easy for Maggie to coast through figure drawing on her present skills, but she never does that. She is constantly pushing. The same is true of her painting. You will see from her portfolio that she is very capable of painting or drawing a still life or an interior. What she excels at is bringing in expressive color and mark. She thinks about how the color and light will affect the mood of her work. She thinks about how edges work and how she can play with the visual space. She thinks about what is outside the window or beyond the door frame.” Another of Solebury’s faculty members notes that Marguerite “impacts our entire community with maturity, wit, and a sense of fun” on a daily basis.
When writing about her goals for her art, Marguerite states, “Art offers a place to see myself reflected, to uncomplicate the thoughts that twist at my mind, and to personify that which seems impossible to replicate. We all imagine ourselves to be unknowable. At the same time, we wish to be known. I’d like to continue to explore the idea of connection — to fashion a mirror out of my canvases — in the hopes that their reflections might reveal some part of myself I was hoping to define, or some part of someone else they had imagined was theirs alone.”
The Art of Shane Adams
Shane Adams lives in Wantagh, New York and is a senior at Wantagh High School. She plans to attend the University of Vermont to pursue a degree in Art Education. Shane has been a member of both the National Junior Art Honor Society (middle school) and has been a member of the National Art Honor Society (NAHS) since 9th grade. In her junior year, Shane was elected as the NAHS vice president, and now holds the position of president of the society. Shane has had work submitted for numerous exhibits within the state year after year.
Through the National Art Honor Society, and on her own, Shane has earned community service creating and sharing her art throughout the community. Shane worked on an art abandonment project, in which she created small works of original art, which were then dropped off around the community in various locations for others to pick up and enjoy. Shane also created and painted several window storefronts for both the holidays and for general displays. Shane is also Wantagh’s “go to” person when the school needs anything from a front cover for the curriculum guide, to a mural outside of a classroom, or anything requiring an artistic talent. In the fall of her junior year, Shane participated in a ten-week intensive figure drawing class at Adelphi University. Shane excelled so much that the professor asked her to come back in the spring, as a peer leader. This year, as a senior, Shane volunteered again at Adelphi and is even teaching parts of some of the classes.
Shane’s decision to become an art educator has been influenced by her own teachers. Of one in particular, Mrs. Hagan, Shane says, “She changed my life in unfathomable ways, and continues to inspire me every single day. She is my role model, and I hope to teach and inspire other young artists like she did for me. She helped me to hone my skills, provided me with opportunities… and has given me countless resources to self-study from. I hope to be as impactful as she is, and as much of a credit to whichever institution I teach at.”
2023 Recipients
This was a banner year as we had 35 applicants from 18 different states and one from an international student! Our congratulations go to the 2023 Scholarship recipients, Natalie Hayes from East Rockaway, New York and Tenley Douglass from Clemmons, North Carolina.
The Art of Natalie Hayes
Natalie is a senior at East Rockaway Junior Senior High. She will be attending School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall. SAIC has a consistent ranking among the top graduate fine arts programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. She also earned a national gold medal in the 2022 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She is a National Honor Society Art Club member, won the 2021 Scholastic Summer Scholarship Award, the 2022 Renzo & Lynette Bianchi Scholarship Award and took first place in the Babylon Citizens Council on the Arts’ 32nd Annual Judged Art Show.
Natalie placed first in the 2022 Congressional Art Competition. Her artwork will hang in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. for a period of one year. Natalie’s goal is to be a working artist and to teach art to young children.
The Art of Tenley Douglass
Tenley is a senior at West Forsyth High School, where she has taken 4 years of honors level art. She will be attending University of North Carolina, Greensboro in the fall, majoring in Art.
Tenley was awarded four gold keys, five silver keys and three honorable mentions in the 2023 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She also won gold and silver keys in 2022 and 2021. She was featured in a Kappen Education Journal, awarded a People’s Choice Award and Grand Prize Award at Artizens 2022, presented at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, was accepted into the National Art Honor Society 2022 Juried Art Exhibition, and was a Grand Prize Winner in the 2021 Emerging Artists Invitational at High Point University’s Sechrest Gallery. Tenley also serves as President of the National Art Honor Society.
Tenley’s goal is to become a successful artist and work for a large animation company such as Disney or Pixar.