As the artist gazed at the photograph her father had taken, she saw the lighting bring an inspiring scene to life: a cow lovingly leaning over her calf lying in the hay. But when 16 year-old Sophie Zhou picked up her brush to paint the touching scene, it was their “heartwarming” bond she aimed to express.
After around 70 hours of painstaking brushwork, Zhou, a junior at Kinkaid School in Houston, finished the evocative oil-on-canvas painting that garnered her the top prize at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this month. That very same painting then fetched a record-setting $276,000 after it was auctioned off.
“My dad actually took this reference photo when we were on a road trip in Texas,” Zhou told The Epoch Times. “I thought it was just really beautiful, how the light was shining down and highlighting the relationship between the mother cow and her calf.”
Zhou, who started drawing as early as she can remember and was taught painting in Chinese school from around age 6, applied the fundamentals of oils in her winning Western-themed artwork, titled “Nurture.” Her technique starts with a simple pencil drawing on the canvas and then builds layers upon layers of paint overtop. She lays down generalized shapes and colors first, then picks out finer and finer details.
A painting usually takes Zhou 20 to 30 hours, she says, but her bovine pair, which she entered into the rodeo’s School Art Auction, was special. Begun in May, its final touches were applied around December.
“I thought it would be great for the rodeo,” she said. “I really wanted to capture the lighting extremely well, and that was especially important to me, which meant I spent a lot of time mixing colors and just painting on the details.”
From the winnings—the highest amount awarded in the competition’s history—Zhou says she will take home $38,000, which she says she plans to invest in ETFs and stocks.
Her painting has been displayed in the lobby of the NRG Center throughout the duration of the 2025 rodeo, which began on March 4 and ends on March 23.
Western culture is something Zhou says she’s always been interested in. She says she and her classmates are currently studying the westward expansion and early cowboying in American History class.
Zhou’s work isn’t limited to Western themes, though. With dozens of paintings under her belt, she’s also fond of portraiture and wildlife. She won a gold medal in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards for her painting “Summertime Sass,” which expresses “summer vibes” as a little Asian girl drinks cola on a hot day.
In another of Zhou’s artworks, an elderly couple savor steamed Chinese dumplings together in an endearing double portrait, titled “Just Like Day One.”
Despite her love of art, however, Zhou intends to pursue a more scholarly avenue after high school.
“Some of my dream universities include U Chicago,” she said. “I plan to go into corporate law or investment banking as of now.”
But painting will definitely remain in the picture “as a hobby for the rest of my life,” she adds, “because I really like it and it makes me happy to do.”
Now, as Zhou finishes up Grade 11, she’s working on commissioned portraits on the side. Next year, when she’s a senior, she plans to enter the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo student painting competition once again. It’ll be her third and final time.
