BELFAST — Like most teenagers, Alyson Peabody asked her parents if she could have the choice in painting her bedroom walls. Sure, they said. But, when they walked in later that night, they were stunned to see she’d painted a mural from Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting, the Starry Night, on one bedroom wall.

“They just stood there and said, ‘Oh. OK, not what we expected,’” she said.

However, given her level of talent, they were not unhappy. Later that night, she painted a rainy city on another wall and a woman in a dress that looks like a peacock on the third.

“When I look at them, I just imagine all of the other images that I want to paint someday when I live in my own house, or I think of all of the backdrops I want to paint as a set designer,” she said.

She submitted her first piece to Waterfall Arts Student Gallery of a woman sipping a cup of tea which she called “Tea-rrific.”

“I saw this photo on Pinterest of a woman looking over her teacup with sort of this sly smile. I really like working with faces. There was just something about hers that was very happy and I wanted to paint it.”

Scrolling through her portfolio, it’s obvious she’s drawn to subject’s eyes.

“I put a lot of attention to detail in those,” she said.

In one of her drawings, it’s obvious the subject is Audrey Hepburn.

“This was the first time I had worked with charcoal in a few years, so this drawing was mostly experimentation. I really enjoy drawing and painting faces (and I had just watched Roman Holiday) so Hepburn was the first person that I thought of drawing.”

The Belfast senior at BAHS is largely self-taught.

“I’ve only taken one arts class here and it was crafts,” she laughed. “I really like working with acrylics, but I also like oil pastels too; that’s a lot of fun.”

In her crafts class, she was assigned the project of making a plaster of Paris mold of her face and to make a mask out of it.

“I toyed with many different ideas before I settled on creating the Medusa-like one. I wanted to incorporate nature into the face while keeping a relatively realistic look to the mask's flesh, so I decided to have the flowers sprouting from the eye sockets like the face is overflowing with natural beauty.”

Peabody is naturally drawn to the creative arts and is into theater as well.

“I've been involved in more than 12 shows as an actress, and one show as a stage manager. I am currently involved in the BAHS production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where I will be portraying Willy Wonka/Candy Man, as well as help design set and props.”

Well, as they say, the eyes have it.

Alyson Peabody’s “Tea-riffic” painting originally appeared in a student show hanging at Waterfall Arts in Belfast.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com