aoife • 17 • Leitrim

16-18 Category   •  2026
This art piece was inspired by my interest in nature and my admiration for the artist Megan Coyne, whose collage work demonstrates how discarded magazine scraps can be transformed into meaningful and visually powerful art. Seeing how Megan Coyne layers fragments of photographs, colors, and textures to create images encouraged me to experiment with collage as both a technique and a concept. I was inspired by the way she embraces imperfections torn edges and overlapping shapes to reflect the beauty of the natural world. Using scrap paper from magazines felt important to me. It connects art making, with sustainability. Showing how materials that are often thrown away can be given new life. For this piece, I focused on creating a natural environment that includes a sky, grass, flowers, and a bee, symbolising nature. The sky is made from layered blue magazine scraps to capture movement and variation, rather than a flat or uniform colour, which reflects how the sky is constantly changing in real life. Below it, the darker greens and textured pieces form grass and land, grounding the composition and giving it depth. The flowers became a central focus of the artwork, because they represent growth, beauty, and renewal, while also providing contrast through their brighter colours and more detailed imagery. Including a bee was especially meaningful to me because it represents the small but vital elements of nature that are often overlooked. Creating this artwork helped me better understand how art can communicate environmental themes without words, using texture, colour, and composition. Overall, this project reflects both my appreciation for the natural world and for artists like Megan Coyne who uses collage to challenge traditional art materials and inspire more thoughtful, sustainable creative practices.