6 August 2007 Painting and political connection feature in opening of new library facilities

The centrepiece of the official opening will be the presentation of a painting to the University, gifted by noted New Zealand painter Maurie Angelo, who is a Lincoln alumnus and past staff member of the University's Landscape Architecture Group.

The presentation will be introduced by fellow New Zealand painter Don Peebles, a former Head of the Painting Department at the University of Canterbury's School of Fine Arts and an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit awarded for services to art.

The painting presentation also signals the start of an exhibition of works by Angelo which includes works reflecting his thoughts on New Zealand soldiers in wartime Italy and the Apennine mountains where he has spent much time painting.

The exhibition in Lincoln University's George Forbes Memorial Library is open to the public from 23 August until 10 September.

Angelo holds a Fine Arts Diploma from the University of Canterbury and a Postgraduate Diploma in Landscape Architecture from Lincoln University. He was an Assistant Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University in the early 1990s, dividing his time with a landscape architecture practice in Burkes Pass and the pursuit of painting in New Zealand and abroad. He has exhibited regularly in New Zealand and overseas for the past 40 years with many of his works reflecting a long love affair with the Mackenzie Country.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand