THOMPSON'S STATION, Tenn. (WTVF) — Elliot Hendrix of Williamson County has the artistic ability of someone well beyond his nine years.
Now, he is a finalist in the nationwide Bob Ross contest for "America's Most Artistic Kid."
For Elliot, painting is more than just putting a sun on a canvas. He al thinks to capturescenes like the sun's reflection over an open body of water.
"I need to make it smoother," Elliot said, while finishing the piece.
When Elliot was two and a half years old, his mom, Natasha, says he was diagnosed with retinoblastoma. He now has a prosthetic left eye. Natasha says the challenges shifted as Elliot got older.
"He has a prosthetic left eye and honestly what I tell people now is the cancer wasn’t the hardest part – it’s always the after and we didn’t know that until he turned to about five and started school," Natasha said.
"Hitting the school system was the hardest thing for him because it was structured, unlike, you know, being at daycare," she said. "And daycare was safe because he had grown up with all of those kids and they accepted him with or without an eye, with or without a prosthetic and they didn’t question it."
Art became an outlet and a place where Elliot feels safe. It is a space where the world makes a little more sense.
"We refer to it as the dark days when he was dealing with a lot of the cancer trauma because he just didn’t feel good about himself," Natasha said. "He felt like he wasn’t good enough."
Now, he's a finalist in a nationwide art contest.
"I think that the most important thing is to teach kids to go for it," Natasha said. "If you want to teach people to go for their dreams and their goals, what better way than to do things like this to see how far they can go?"
If you want to vote for Elliot, you can click here. Voting ends Thursday night at 9 p.m.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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