We used to walk along the railroad tracks that trace the waters edge. With a million dollar view across the harbour towards downtown Halifax this was an easy choice. Dartmouth Cove is a work in progress these days, long gone are the marine slips and shipyard with the collection of all things marine. Today the relics from the past are slowly being replaced with glass covered concrete and steel towers.
On one of my trips in the car studio last winter I wound my way through downtown Dartmouth looking for harbour viewpoints. Snow was piled up everywhere and travelling on Pleasant Street towards Eastern Passage I turned into the campus of the Nova Scotia Community College. The parking area was cleared provided a view overlooking the cove.
The bird was not visible in my original drawing and did not immediately appear on the day. It was during the next week in the studio where I had been working on the digital paintings thoughts turned to the content of the images. The original abstracted digital work began to move towards realism through bird images and when the two images met an interesting unplanned union occurred.
When the two images were joined a conversation began. Is the painting one of a giant bird or is the painting one of a tiny city? How can the two exist together?
