Every year, districts in the U.S. encourage young artists to submit their art to the Congressional Art Competition. One of the 2023 winners was Mounds View junior Karin Hoyt, who is the first Mounds View student to win the competition for the fourth district of Minnesota. Her piece, “Flyaways,” which she said took her around 25 hours to complete, now hangs in the Cannon Tunnel in Washington, D.C., which connects the Cannon Office Building and the Capitol. 

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Hoyt’s painting, “Flyaways,” which won the Congressional Art Competition for the fourth district of MN and now hangs in the Cannon Tunnel in Washington, D.C.

“I’ve always loved art. My mom is an art teacher, she majored in art, so I’ve always just been exposed to it from a young age,” said Hoyt. Hoyt’s mother is an art teacher at Yinghua Academy, a Chinese language school in Minneapolis, where she attended from kindergarten to eighth grade. “She would come home and check on me, and I would ask, ‘Oh, what do you think of this?’ and she would go, ‘Oh, change this, change that.’” Hoyt explains it was like having a personal art teacher at home, constantly giving constructive criticism. 

When Hoyt started AP Art her sophomore year, she experimented with new art styles. She began painting with oil-based paints and found her new favorite medium. “The first assignment, you were supposed to do something you weren’t comfortable with, and I’d never done it before. All my favorite paintings were oil. Very much like Renaissance artists.” 

Oil paints tend to have a longer drying period, allowing artists to go back, change and refine their paintings. This was a struggle for Hoyt at first, but she later found that the ability to blend paints later on was more favorable than finishing every painting in one go. With increasing confidence in oil painting, Hoyt began submitting her paintings to competitions. Her first submission was to a contest at Irondale. Though she didn’t win any awards, she was still motivated to submit her work, so she entered the Congressional Art Competition. 

Inspired by this success, Hoyt hopes to continue as an artist and involve art in her future career. She wants to major in either art, education or combine those two and major in art education. “I would love to [continue art], but I feel like if I just focus on my painting or not try for anything else, I would get burnt out,” said Hoyt.

On average, Hoyt said she spends about two hours a day drawing. “I would watch YouTube videos because they’re so fun, but they weren’t like tutorials. It was people drawing,” she said. Throughout middle school, she watched Youtuber DrawingWiffWaffles draw people and learned from their techniques. “I’d also just keep practicing and then ask for feedback. Don’t take it personally, just see it as constructive criticism,” said Hoyt. 

Her passion for art is stronger than ever, and she looks forward to submitting more of her work to competitions in the future. Hoyt recently entered The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition, where she earned a “gold key,” meaning she was one of a few winners. She is now qualified to enter the national competition and earn a full-ride scholarship toward an art summer camp.