Islay McNab is a contemporary visual artist who lives and works in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (Mi'kma'ki) with her 3 young children.

She draws inspiration for painting from dreams, her relationship to the ocean, and the external environmental factors and landscape around her on the rugged East Coast.

Her expressive works stem from a meditative practice of noticing with gratitude the vibrant textures, patterns, colours, and life cycles found in the natural world. With her work she seeks to honour and highlight the mystery and sanctity of nature and offers an invitation for the viewer to find metaphors and deeper meaning woven into her paintings and the titles that accompany them.

A chef and a hobby gardener, she is currently exploring the use of food waste and byproducts of cooking and gardening to make pigments and dyes for art-making. Some of her recent paintings have included dye derived from beets, purple cabbage for block printing, avocado pit dye, paired with more traditional mediums of acrylic and oil paint.