Bishop T.K. Gorman student Matthew McGehee poses with with the art work for which he received the Scholastic Art & Writing award at the school on Thursday March 24, 2016. (Cory McCoy/Staff)

BETTY WATERS,

Tylerite Matthew McGehee, 18, is an award-winning artist.

“I’ve been doing art my whole life and all throughout high school. My mom, being an art teacher, has raised me to do art,” McGehee, a senior at T.K. Gorman Catholic School, said.

He has won art awards on many different levels – locally, regionally and nationally.

His latest award this spring is a silver medal in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Out of 320,000 artists competing nationally, McGehee won a silver medal for an art piece titled “Hitchhiking Across Texas.”

Winning the silver medal placed McGehee within the top 1 percent of submissions by students across the country in grades seven through 12.

Although Gorman students have entered the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition in the past, “this is the first time we’ve had a national award winner,” Lisa McGehee, Gorman’s art teacher and Matthew’s mother, said.

Matthew McGehee said his entry this year is a personal piece since he has traveled extensively in Texas. Using a marker and ink pen medium and observing his own hand, he drew the form of a hand giving a hitchhiking signal on a map of Texas. “It speaks to all the places I’ve gone all over Texas,” he said.

Back in eighth grade, Matthew McGehee won the gold key award for sculpture in the regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition.

Two years ago, he won the Congressional Art Contest, and his piece hung in the capitol in Washington, D.C.

His mother, who has taught art at Gorman for 12 years, said her son is “one of the best” art students she has seen come through the school.

She said she’s encouraged his art since he was a child. He started art classes in middle school and took advanced placement art his sophomore through senior years in high school.

 “I do all different kinds. My sophomore year, I focused on drawing. My junior year, I did a lot of digital work, photography and digitally altered pieces. In my senior year, I’m doing sculpture pieces,” Matthew McGehee said. “I like doing all of them.”

He does a lot of drawings using different mediums, including graphite, pastels and charcoal.

“When I go on vacation, it’s fun to bring a sketch book and do some drawings. I do art all the time,” Matthew McGehee said.

Art runs in the family, he said, noting that not only is his mother an art teacher, but his father does sculpture and teaches film in Troup, and other family members are into art, as well.

Matthew McGehee plans to attend the Carnegie Mellon University School of Design in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

He also was accepted by several other premiere art universities, including The University of Texas at Austin, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Art Institute of Chicago, Northeastern University and Rochester Institute of Technology.

“I want to be a designer. I’m not sure what kind yet, but all of the programs that I’ve been applying to allow you to explore different avenues of design. It might be environmental, industrial or graphic,” Matthew McGehee said.

Twitter: @Betty_TMT