artists at the University of New Brunswick. Artistic career A painter of people and landscapes, her artworks tend to reveal a sombre though joyful, reflective and humanitarian insight. In 1927 and 1928, encouraged by ethnographer Marius Barbeau, MacLeod travelled to the west and northwest of Canada. Thanks to Barbeau and to the Canadian Pacific Railway, MacLeod received free transportation on her summer trip. She painted at Morley Station in the foothills of the Rockies and among the Stoney First Nations. During her time in British Columbia MacLeod met artist Emily Carr, whose work exerted an influence on her own. Pegi stayed in Calgary with the F.G. Garbutt family who were strong supporters of the arts. The Garbutts and Pegi stayed friends for life. While there, Pegi painted a portrait of Alice Garbutt that demonstrates her increasing use of strong contour lines. MacLeod exhibited two of her portrait studies of the Stoney First Nations in the major exhibition, West Coast Art – Native and Modern organized the National Gallery of Canada in December 1927. This exhibition was, and has been, much written about and marks the first real effort to include the cultural production of Northwest Coast First Nations within the institutionalization of Canadian art history. During her travels in 1927, MacLeod is said to have created notebooks and drawings according to her friends. However, nothing is extant to confirm this. The artist also began a draft of a book on her experiences on the west coast. It is possible that MacLeod's mother may have destroyed her book draft, Marian Scott has stated that the artist's mother destroyed much of her early work. MacLeod travelled west again in 1928 to paint in the Upper Skeena River area. She wrote about her travels for the Canadian National Railway Company's magazine and the article marks her first important foray into art writing. The solo exhibition Portraits, Landscapes and Studies by Pegi Nicol was held in Montreal at the Leonardo Society from February 4–11, 1928 and in the same year she was invited to show with the Group of Seven in Toronto. In the late 1920s, MacLeod moved from Ottawa to Montreal, and then to Toronto, where she worked on window displays for the T. Eaton Company. This position had a strong influence on her art, as demonstrated by her painting A Descent of Lilies (1935). MacLeod was art editor of The Canadian Forum