Mona Jain Middle art student receives Dalí exhibit's Award of Excellence

Lakewood Ranch 13-year-old Bronx Hanratty has a passion for digital art and is inspired by everything around him — music, video games, famous artists and more. 

“Bronx is one of those rare, young artists who seems deeply rooted in his creativity. He’s growing his ideas from the ground up,” said Katelyn Reyes, the digital art teacher at Mona Jain Middle, where Hanratty is a student. “There’s a quiet wisdom in the way he approaches his work, and a natural curiosity that keeps him always exploring.

"His artistic style and technical ability are well beyond his grade level, and I truly believe that if he chooses to pursue a future in the arts, or design, he has the potential to go very far.”

At the Dalí Museum Student Surrealist Art Exhibit, Hanratty received the Award of Excellence, which is the highest honor given to a middle school art student at the contest. The piece he entered is titled “Cascade Creation.” 

“I had a friend — I basically saw him crumble until he was able to get help — and he was able to escape that,” Hanratty said. “The bear was his true self and he was able to escape and get out of the situation that he was in and heal back to the person that he was.” 

The piece was created with Photoshop and presents a bear with multiple mouths.

“I decided to do that with the mouth because there was a lot of extra room there,” Hanratty said. “I kind of warped them to make them look different and not just copy and pasted.”

The contest was held June 7 at the Dalí in St. Petersburg, Florida. Over 500 Florida students submitted artwork into the contest and 43 middle school students were selected for the final exhibition. 

“It was really cool being able to go with her [Reyes] because she was jumping for joy the entire time,” Hanratty said. 

“When I walked in and saw it on that wall compared to the other photos, the colors popped,” said James Hanratty, Bronx’s father. “It was just so much more vibrant and just a cleaner overall design compared to so many of the other finalists in that competition. It stood out.”

James Hanratty is the experience designer for the global web team at Esab Corporation, a world leader in fabrication and specialty gas control technology.

“I am a designer and front end developer by trade,” James Hanratty said. “This just showed me that I can't hold a candle to my son's talent — I already know it's obvious that he's a better designer than I am — so that alone, the pride there is just astronomical.”

Bronx Hanratty said it is a mix of skill and luck to win a contest such as this one. He said it’s all based on the judges' preferences.

“You're being put up against all these other kids from sixth grade to 12th grade in the contest, so I do think it's a skill because you need to be the best in your criteria. I thought that there were some art pieces that were better than mine, but I was still able to win.” 

Bronx Hanratty said his main goal as an artist is to create art that is universally liked. 

“I'm paranoid if people will like my art or not,” Bronx Hanratty said. 

Bronx Hanratty said he often finds himself staring at a blank document in Photoshop because getting started is the hardest part of creating art. He doesn't always have a clear idea of what he is making, but figures it out by doing. 

“It's like building train tracks when the train is already coming,” Bronx Hanratty said. “I'm just always going.” 

Bronx Hanratty said the most important things he’s learned from Reyes were to have multiple renditions of an art piece to experiment with and to hit the save button multiple times when using Photoshop. 

“Multiple times my file would get corrupted and I'd lose my entire progress for an artwork, and that's not fun,” Bronx Hanratty said. 

“The sky's the limit with Bronx,” said Amber Hanratty, Bronx’s mom. “He is so passionate about it, so driven. When he gets something in his head he pushes through, and if he does something, and he realizes he could do better, he'll start over. He's not shy about doing that because he wants perfection.”

Bronx Hanratty said he wants to pursue some sort of art related career in the future, whether it be game design, web design or something similar. 

“Him pursuing what he loves and that just happening to be one of my passions, it's one of the greatest feelings you could ever have,” James Hanratty said.