Painting Mid-Island - Historical Painters Connected to Oceanside

Vancouver Island has long been a magnet for artists. Its changing light, rugged shoreline, ancient forests, working harbours, and quiet rural roads have inspired generations of painters searching for something uniquely Canadian.

The communities of Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Nanoose Bay, and Nanaimo occupy one of the island's most picturesque stretches. While today the area is known for its thriving arts community and numerous galleries, its artistic legacy reaches back well over a century.

Here are some of the painters who helped shape the artistic identity of this remarkable region.

E.J. Hughes: The Painter of Vancouver Island

If one artist is most closely connected to the central east coast of Vancouver Island, it is E. J. Hughes.

Although born in North Vancouver, Hughes spent much of his childhood in Nanaimo, where his father worked in the coal industry. Those early experiences stayed with him throughout his life and became the foundation for many of his most beloved paintings.

Following the Second World War, Hughes returned to Vancouver Island and devoted decades to painting its communities, forests, farms, ferries, fishing boats, beaches, and harbours. His distinctive style, characterized by simplified forms, brilliant colour, and carefully balanced compositions, transformed everyday British Columbia into something timeless.

In 1948, supported by an Emily Carr Scholarship, Hughes made an extensive sketching trip along the Island's east coast. He stopped in Nanaimo, Qualicum Beach, Chemainus, Ladysmith, and Courtenay, filling sketchbooks that would become source material for paintings over many decades.

Many of his paintings of Nanaimo Harbour, nearby coastal communities, and Vancouver Island landscapes are now considered masterpieces of Canadian art.

Qualicum by EJ Hughes 1948

Emily Carr and the Central Island

Few names loom larger in Canadian art than Emily Carr.

Although Carr is most closely associated with Victoria, Haida Gwaii, and the remote Indigenous villages of British Columbia's coast, her travels frequently brought her through central Vancouver Island. She travelled the Island extensively while searching for Indigenous villages, monumental forests, and landscapes that reflected what she described as the spirit of the West Coast.

There is no strong historical evidence that Parksville itself became the subject of major Emily Carr paintings. However, the forests, shorelines, and ancient Douglas fir ecosystems surrounding Nanoose Bay, Qualicum Beach, and nearby Cathedral Grove belong to the same coastal environment that deeply influenced her mature work.

Her paintings helped redefine how Canadians viewed British Columbia, not simply as scenery, but as a place of immense spiritual and ecological significance.

Emily Carr, Forest, British Columbia, 1931–32

Toni Onley and the Coastal Landscape

Toni Onley became one of Canada's finest interpreters of British Columbia's landscape.

Working primarily in watercolour and oil, Onley travelled extensively by car, boat, and airplane, painting coastlines, mountains, estuaries, and remote communities throughout the province.

Like many painters before him, he was drawn repeatedly to Vancouver Island. While he is not specifically associated with Parksville or Qualicum Beach, the estuaries, beaches, tidal flats, and shifting weather systems of central Vancouver Island closely reflect the atmospheric qualities found throughout his work.

His paintings captured not simply the appearance of a place, but its weather, mood, and silence.

Toni Onley, River to the Sea, 1980

Takao Tanabe and Qualicum Beach

One of the strongest artistic connections to the region belongs to Takao Tanabe.

After achieving international recognition, Tanabe settled in Qualicum Beach, where he established his studio and created many of the luminous landscapes that define the later part of his career.

His restrained paintings of fields, shorelines, distant forests, and expansive skies distill the landscape into simple horizontal bands of colour and atmosphere. Rather than documenting specific locations, Tanabe paints the quiet rhythm and spaciousness that characterize Vancouver Island.

Today, Qualicum Beach remains closely associated with his artistic legacy.

Takao Tanabe, Sunset - 3/86 From Qualicum, 1986

The Island Influence

The stretch between Nanaimo and Qualicum Beach has quietly become one of Canada's enduring artistic landscapes. The combination of long sandy beaches, Garry oak meadows, rocky shorelines, working marinas, old-growth forests, and ever-changing Pacific light continues to attract painters from across the country.

Unlike the dramatic cliffs of the west coast, the east coast offers something quieter. Here, artists often discover subtle beauty in tidal flats, weathered docks, distant mountains across the Strait of Georgia, and the daily rhythms of coastal life. It is no coincidence that so many painters have returned here again and again.

Brandy Saturley - The World is Your Oyster, 76.2 x 76.2 cm, 2025

Today's Artists Continue the Tradition

The artistic story of the region continues to evolve.

Parksville and Qualicum Beach have become important destinations for collectors and artists alike, supported by commercial galleries, artist studios, public art initiatives, and organizations such as the Federation of Canadian Artists. The area hosts numerous exhibitions, studio tours, and cultural events throughout the year, making it one of the most active visual arts communities on Vancouver Island.

For contemporary painters, the region offers the same qualities that inspired those who came before: extraordinary light, remarkable landscapes, and endless opportunities for visual storytelling.

Whether standing on the shoreline at Rathtrevor Beach, sketching boats in Nanaimo Harbour, or watching morning fog drift across the fields near Qualicum Beach, artists continue to discover that this corner of Vancouver Island has a quiet ability to slow time and sharpen observation.

More than a century after the first painters arrived with easels and sketchbooks, the landscapes of Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Nanoose Bay, and Nanaimo continue to invite artists to look a little longer, paint a little deeper, and tell new stories about Canada's West Coast.