The artwork Ramona resident Brando Duran entered in this year’s Ramona Veterans of Foreign Wars Patriotic Art Contest will be advancing to a state-level VFW competition.
Duran, 19, who graduated from Ramona High School last week, said he entered the contest this spring to pay tribute to military veterans and to earn scholarship money to enter a Bellus Academy program to study barbering.
Duran’s winning artwork was a painting of a soldier.
“It’s a universal soldier who represents soldiers throughout the decades,” Duran said. “It sends a message of men having to do things they don’t want to do but they have to do it if they want to survive and see their loved ones again.”
Duran said he was inspired by his great-grandfather Harry Clayton Elliott, who served under Gen. George Patton in the U.S. Army during World War II and was assigned to help liberate a concentration camp.
“Later on he had severe post traumatic stress syndrome and my grandmother and her siblings suffered through his attacks,” Duran said. “(My artwork) is a good representation of what men had to go through back then and even now.”
Dianne Fink, past VFW Auxiliary president, said Duran’s piece was the only submission in the Ramona Patriotic Art Contest this year so he was automatically awarded first place. The first place prize he received was $250.
The artwork will now advance to a VFW state competition, Fink said. The next level of competition would be the national VFW contest, she said.