Bella Duke’s Oil Painting Chosen for Heckscher Museum Exhibition

Katherine “Bella” Duke is one of the stars of Huntington High School’s Class of 2028. Both athletically and academically she is clearly gifted, playing important roles on multiple sports teams and compiling a grade average in excess of 101.

Ms. Duke is also an exceptional young artist. Her oil on canvas painting is one of 84 pieces of artwork chosen for the 30th edition of the Long Island’s Best exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art. Students from 63 high schools had submitted 402 pieces of work to the show’s judges.

Ms. Duke has worked closely with Huntington High School art teacher Kristin Singer, a Cornell University graduate and district veteran. She has helped sharpen Ms. Duke’s skills and focus. The results are impressive.

Ms. Duke’s painting will be displayed at the Heckscher Museum in the Long Island’s Best exhibition, which will run from March 23 through May 3. The formal opening of the exhibition will coincide with the award ceremony on Saturday, March 28 from 12-6 p.m.

Artist’s Statement by Bella Duke

This painting was inspired by the sculptures of Emma Stebbins, especially her ability to give stone figures a sense of quiet emotion and inner life. Stebbins’s work often shows calm, reflective moments, and I was drawn to how her figures feel timeless, yet deeply human. I wanted to translate that feeling into a contemporary context.

In my artwork, ‘Screenager,’ I reimagined a classical figure as a modern teenage girl. She is posed like a traditional sculpture, with draped clothing and a neutral expression, but she is holding a phone and wearing headphones. This contrast connects Stebbins’s 19th-century sculptures to life today. Just as Stebbins’s figures appear lost in thought, my figure is absorbed in her own world through technology.

I chose a muted grayscale palette to reference the stone and marble surfaces of Stebbins’s sculptures. The lack of color creates a quiet, almost frozen atmosphere, emphasizing stillness and introspection. The phone becomes the only sign of modern life, symbolizing how technology has replaced moments of reflection with constant connection.

By combining classical imagery with modern objects, I wanted to explore how isolation, contemplation, and emotional distance still exist today, even as the world around us has changed.