Angie Au Hemphill has been producing artwork in the Royal City for the past two decades.
And now she has been honoured for her achievements with the 2012 Bernie Legge Cultural Award, which is given out annually to recognize excellence, dedication and commitment to the arts in New Westminster.
"I'm honoured that they recognized me," she said.
The other nominees for the 2012 award were Renée Bucciarelli and Katherine Freund-Hainsworth.
Au Hemphill is a prolific painter whose oils and acrylics are strongly influenced by the European impressionist style.
Every year, she produces watercolour canvasses of heritage homes in New Westminster for the local homes tour and regularly donates her work for various charities.
In 2010, she started a project through the Federation of Canadian Artists, in which 65 prominent Canadian painters collaborated to each paint one red rose for a larger painting in support of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
The project was in honour of Eva Markvoort, a New Westminster woman who went by the Internet handle 65_ RedRoses, who blogged about her experiences with cystic fibrosis before she died in 2010.
Posters of the project are sold as a fundraiser to support the foundation and help find a cure for the disease. So far, the project has raised about $200,000.
Au Hemphill works out of her home studio.
She enjoys painting everything from portraits to nightscapes, and especially likes to find local subjects to focus on.
"Living in New Westminster, there are so many things to paint," she said. "You could paint the old trees in Queen's Park, you could paint heritage homes. . We live in a beautiful place, a beautiful environment, and I just like to capture that."
