Sylvia Feeney exhibits “The Spirit of Seventy-Six” at athletic club.

There’s a Chinese proverb, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

Suquamish artist Sylvia Feeney has taken that advice to heart, but she’s using art instead of a candle to fight the darkness of cancer.

Feeney is staging “The Spirit of Seventy-Six,” a display of 13 large mixed-media canvasses, at the Poulsbo Athletic Club. She created all the works this year, after fighting non-Hodgkins lymphoma for the last five years.

“I did the paintings because of the experience of going through chemotherapy,” she said. “I wanted to work with bright colors.”

The “seventy-six” refers to her age, although she really doesn’t look it, with stylishly coifed blonde hair, slim figure and trendy clothes.

The works are not for sale, but she hopes the paintings will bring attention to Kitsap Cancer Services, a non-profit agency in Poulsbo that provides support and education for cancer patients and their families.

Feeney hasn’t used the agency’s services, but learned of it because the president, Mark Smaha, works at the Poulsbo Athletic Club, where Feeney has been a regular for nine years.

There is information about Kitsap Cancer Services available at the front desk of the athletic club, and Feeney is offering one of her paintings, “Irises” as a drawing prize for anyone who makes a contribution to the organization while at the club.

The paintings reflect the journey Feeney has been on as she tries to overtake her cancer, and feature items from her own treasures gathered over the years.

“It came to me that I have an awful lot of lovely things that I have collected over the years,” she said.

One painting features a Chinese Foo dog, like one she used to own. Another uses depictions of Japanese buttons given to her by a friend.

“I realized they were the seven gods of good fortune,” she said. In the painting they went.

Two of the paintings in particular have significance to her life.

“’Renaissance’” depicts the hope you can have while undergoing cancer,” she said, while “Into the Storm” is an unusual mixed media piece featuring a collage of a sailboat, with an overlay of loosely hand woven grass mat.

The Poulsbo Athletic Club was also a natural choice for Feeney’s exhibit, as it has been like a second home, and second family for her. You can find her there at 5 a.m. (!) several days a week. She is active in the early morning spinning class and also does aerobics and strength training. Her workout buddies recently threw a black and white birthday party for her, complete with tiara.

“They’ve been such wonderful friends,” she said.

Feeney retired from the Seattle Post Intelligencer in 1996 after a 30-plus year career that saw her working in departments from circulation to editorial. She has a lot more time to paint now.

Her artwork has been seen at the North Kitsap Arts and Crafts Fair, and her whimsical 17-painting series, “Oh Kid, I Know What Let’s Do,” had three showings in Poulsbo in 2005. The paintings captured Feeney’s spunky personality as they depicted the “mad-cap adventures of two Poulsbo Athletic Club lady gym-rats who, upon discovering that they were both ‘unusually well attired,’ jumped into a Mercedes convertible for a wild dash (top down, scarves flying) around the country to show off their ‘splendid outfits’ at all the cool spots in northern Kitsap County.”

Feeley said she hopes the paintings lining the stairwell may, “in some small way, inspire each of us (particularly those fighting cancer in any form) to look to the future with good cheer, hope and a resolve to keep our bodies vital and strong, even if aged 76 … .”

She isn’t offering the paintings for sale because she thinks her children and grandchildren might enjoy them and because “they’re kind of like my babies. When you get to be 76 you’re probably not going to paint a lot more.”

People can learn more about Kitsap Cancer Services by stopping by the Poulsbo Athletic Club and picking up a brochure while viewing the art, or visiting www.kitsapcancerservices.org.