50 x 40cm
SOLD  

Painting of Shaw Savill's Drina in Cardiff Docks

This is a very personal painting of Shaw Savill's Drina. It was the first I painted after going back to try to paint subjects I had painted as a child. I imagined I was my ten year old self, warming the crayons in the backs of my knees (short trousers in all weathers until age eleven in those days). I put it in a temporary frame and it hung in my studio for over a year. It possesses a quiet authority.

It’s a very generic Cardiff Dock, probably the Roath Basin but it’s not supposed to be realistic. The ship is Shaw Savill’s "Drina" but it represents all of my Dad’s ships before he served on container ships: first as 1ON (First Officer, Navigating) with OCL and later as Captain with P&O. To me though, ships like the Drina and Pacific Northwest are "proper ships".

Dock water always seemed black especially on days with overcast skies. A deceptively simple painting in black, greys and red with the cranes in blue. To increase interest, I needed to put in shadows. Not something I would have done as a child, so the shadows, rather strong shadows for such an overcast sky, are cast in several directions as if from the dock lights.

The 50x40cm paper size is a modern metric equivalent of the standard imperial "Crown" size of sugar paper we were issued with in school and upon which I painted dozens of versions of paintings of this subject.

This painting was sold during the well received Unreliable Memories exhibition at the West Wharf Galley in the summer of 2013.