"Gold Coast Transit" oil pastel by Danny LawlorBuenaventura Art Association will showcase works by the top three winners of last year’s Collegiate Student Art Competition in a Jan. 22-Feb. 17 group exhibition at Harbor Village Gallery in Ventura.

Danny Lawlor of Oxnard College, Linda Kennon of Ventura College, and Rylann Smith of CSU Channel Islands took first through third places, respectively, in the March 13-April 15, 2013, student show juried by longtime local artist and instructor Bob Privitt of Thousand Oaks. It was the seventh annual scholarship competition sponsored by the artists’ cooperative, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Lawlor won $800 and his name inscribed on the BAA Emerging Artist Cup for “Gold Coast Transit,” an oil pastel; Kennon earned $600 for “Bad Little Robot,” a graphite image on burned paper; and Smith got $350 for “Eyeris,” a graphite drawing on paper.

The three young artists will attend a reception in their honor from 5-7 p.m. Jan. 25 in the gallery at Ventura Harbor. Each plans to have about 10 recent works on display. All of them say they’re pursuing a longstanding passion and aptitude for art.

Five years after earning a bachelor’s degree in history at UCLA and after “a series of random jobs” around the country, Lawlor, who had shown drawing talent as a child, said he began to see art as what made his life enjoyable and meaningful, so he enrolled at Oxnard. He said he is “still exploring every 2D style and medium” and will show pen-and-ink drawings and paintings.

“I love looking at things,” he said. “I love shadows and colors, distance and shapes, faces and patterns. The people and places around me inspire me to draw and share that love.”

Kennon is studying digital design, drawing and 3D design and creates works in photography, graphite, pastels, ceramics and mixed media.

“Just about everyone and everything influence me,” Kennon said. “I love dreaming up (often literally) ideas and then realizing them in a visual way.”

Smith, another graphic design and digital media student, said she currently uses photography more than any other medium. She likes finding “small objects outdoors, such as snails, ‘playing with them’ and then photographing them” and said sharing details of nature with others is her favorite part of creating her art.

She said, “I enjoy taking macro photos and drawing macro subjects in order to inspire the viewers to look more closely at things that they encounter in their daily activities that would otherwise go unnoticed.”

Harbor Village Gallery, at 1591 Spinnaker Drive, is open noon-6 p.m. daily except Tuesdays. For more information about this exhibit or the nonprofit Buenaventura Art Association and its programs and opportunities, call the downtown Ventura gallery at 648-1235 or visit the website www.buenaventuragallery.org