60 x 50cm
SOLD  

Painting of Cardiff Bay in Purples

This painting is the centrepiece of the seven that make up the "Hiraethau" series exhibited at the Senedd Building in Cardiff Bay and which then transferred to the West Wharf Gallery in Cardiff during the summer of 2014.

A slightly larger painting of Cardiff Bay in purples and featuring Penarth Esplanade and Pier. The ship at the bottom right represents the Shaw Savill Lines "Drina" on which my family sailed to South America in the seventies - leaving me in Cardiff. Another of my Dad’s ships, Furness Withy’s "S.S. Pacific Northwest" can be seen in the Bute dock behind the Wales Millennium Centre.

A common theme in my paintings, ships, long since broken up, represent a bitter-sweet, transient homecoming. The family is once again complete, but ships set sail again and although Pacific Northwest is in dock, the Drina is sailing away from Cardiff. The Castle class locomotive is also taking away loved ones to the lost lands of England.

Note that the Norwegian Church is in its original position at Bute West Dock. The tug which seems to be plonked onto dry land was an exhibit of the Industrial and Maritime Museum, which stood on the site - likewise the yellow Westland Whirlwind helicopter. The Museum has since relocated to Swansea.

The "crayon scribble" clouds form a band at the very top of the painting in a nod to the way children will often paint a blue line at the top of a painting to represent "the sky" and a green line at the bottom to represent "the ground". The purple is the colour of the sky seen through the windows of Radnor Road junior and infants school on an autumn/winter afternoon. We would come in, soaking wet, shorts clinging to our red, goose-pimpled legs after a dinnertime spent kicking a tennis ball around the playground in the rain. "Sir" would then order us to, "Take out your ‘Heritage English’ books". And I’d know I’d be in for a productive afternoon - picking at a scab on my knee.

"Sir" did teach me one thing. Apparently, you can’t start a sentence with the word "and".