Harland & Wolff cranes

Cranes

Transcript

00:00 My name is Colin H. Davidson. I've been painting the shipyard cranes from approximately 2005-2006.

00:07 In that time I must have painted approximately a thousand paintings of the cranes on the surrounding area.

00:15 In 2005-2006 I'd reached a crossroads regarding my hobby in oil painting

00:23 where I have always known that I have had a colour blinding balance and which really frustrated me.

00:32 So when you're trying to paint local country scenes like Scrabble and Mourne Mountains and

00:36 throughout the local areas it always frustrated me that it always looked a bit messy.

00:43 So my wife then said to me why don't you start painting images of the cranes.

00:52 So with your past employment and your family history it would be really nice.

01:01 My first image in my head was of a crane hanging on somebody's wall. Who on earth is going to want

01:10 to have large paintings or any type of painting hanging on the walls of the cranes.

01:18 So I thought to myself I'll give it a go. My first title and the first location that I was going to

01:27 paint from was the top of D Street watching the men walking out from the shipyard.

01:33 And the title of that was Waiting for my Dad. After painting them I went to a gallery out in

01:41 Hollywood and they took three away initially and they sold within the first month. And they

01:50 invited me to supply more that led then to an exhibition in 2009. The exhibition was a sellout

02:04 from me painting as a hobby artist to professional painter. I have painted approximately a thousand

02:11 paintings. So much so that it got me the exposure to the Titanic Hotel when it was being converted

02:21 from the old drawn offices into the hotel that it is now. In 2017 I was approached to do a commission

02:32 for the hotel where eight of my paintings that was commissioned by the hotel hang.

02:38 It's capturing a moment in time when either maybe a family member may have worked there.

02:45 There may have been an individual who was quite prominent in the family and maybe sadly no longer

02:54 there and they just want something to remember. To me now that I've been living up in Belfast now

03:00 for almost 30 years, Belfast is home. Either you're coming in by boat or you're flying in

03:08 or you're coming down from a cave hill area and you just you know you're home.

03:14 So they really spell out to me we're nearly there, we're nearly home.

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