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New artist featured at gallery

Penny Grant and her light-filled oil paintings are featured at Nanaimo Arts Council gallery next month.
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Penny Grant’s oil paintings are recognizable for the artist’s use of light. Her work is on display in March at Nanaimo Arts Council gallery.

Penny Grant and her light-filled oil paintings are featured at Nanaimo Arts Council gallery next month.Grant, who has lived on the Island since 1965 and in Nanaimo for almost 30 years, did much of her early work in the Cowichan Valley, where she was a student of Robin Field at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University).Grant took a break from painting while she pursued a career as a library administrator at the Vancouver Island Regional Library. “I had always hoped that when I retired from VIRL I would pick up painting where I had left off,” she said, in a press release from the arts council. “Last fall, with the encouragement of Penny Maday of Island Girl Art Studio, I went back to painting in oils.”Looking Back and Looking Forward, the title of her feature show, looks back to 10 early paintings of boating scenes and real and unreal images of women. The show looks forward to five new paintings of Nanaimo Harbour and Newcastle Island. In the future, Grant plans to continue exploring and celebrating the beauty of Nanaimo and the surrounding area. As an avid boater and walker, she is particularly drawn to trying to capture Nanaimo’s ever-changing vistas of water, forest and sky.Grant, a new member of the arts council, is available at the gallery in Nanaimo North Town Centre March 8, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and March 16, 5:30-9 p.m. A reception for the exhibit, which is on display throughout March, is set for March 12, 2-4 p.m. For more information, please visit www.nanaimoartscouncil.ca or call 250-729-3947.