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Episcopal High School Student Hosts an Art Show

By Sophia Wayne, Episcopal High School, School Buzz Editor | December 1, 2016

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Lani McHenry, a freshman at Episcopal High School, is passionate about art. (Photo: Emmon Photography)

Episcopal High school bases its curriculum off of four pillars: arts, athletics, academics and religion. One freshman at Episcopal high school, Lani McHenry, has found her niche with the arts pillar and will soon host an art show.

Lani’s love for art started when she was eight years old. Lani says, “I learned about kids that had cancer and I wanted to do something that would raise awareness of cancer, so I started painting.” As she kept painting, it eventually grew into a passion and now Lani paints ballerinas.

Lani likes to paint ballerinas because “I have always wanted to be a ballerina and I admire them, which is why I started painting them in the first place. I also like their free essence and there are a lot of different ways I can portray these ballerinas.” Lani paints each ballerina in a different pose, with different colors to express the mood of the painting and the ballerina. She tries to make every painting individual and to give each painting its own character.

A painting from Lani McHenry's collection, “The Ballerina.”

Lani uses music as inspiration for her paintings. She loves to listen to old records, and one of her favorite singers is Billie Holiday. This inspiration helped with her paintings of ballerinas, many of which will be in her upcoming art show.

Lani says, “I paint a lot as a stress-reliever, and that turned into so many paintings that I will use in my upcoming art show.” Just like when Lani started, she is dedicating this art show to raising awareness and money from the paintings she sells to all types of cancer. She has decided to donate all of the money she makes from the paintings she sells in this art show to St. Jude’s Hospital.

Lani has invested lots of her time and effort into these paintings for her upcoming art show. Since she started painting, Lani has raised over seven thousand dollars and hopes to raise that number by the end of her upcoming art show. Her show will be Dec. 10, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. at Pottery Barn Kids in Highland Village, and she will be selling paintings from her collection, “The Ballerina.”