A RECENT painting by Catherine Moody has been selected for a February exhibition at the Royal College of Art.

Miss Moody, who is president of Malvern Art Club, is a former student of the Royal College, where the exhibition will run from February 1 to 10.

Her painting, The Young Reader, is among 111 works short-listed for the Hunting Art Prizes out of 2,000 submitted. It is a small oil painting of a little girl bending to pull a book from a library shelf, taken from a detail of a larger picture.

"The original was a pastel, about 2ft by 2ft, of a Gothic library interior. The little girl was in the foreground," said Miss Moody, of Sling Lane, Malvern. "It was a library from my imagination, based on my liking for Victorian Gothic interiors and libraries I have known."

Miss Moody is also being considered for a poetry prize, after having some of her poems selected for a new anthology, Beyond the Stars, featuring 12 poets. Her work has been entered in the Forward Press Top 100 Poets of the Year Competition, with a chance to win up to £3,000.

The anthology, published by Spotlight Books at £6.95, is available from the Malvern Bookshop and Jonathan Gibbs Books, Welland.