This year marks the 50th anniversary of the installation of Samson, the second of the two cranes at Hardland and Wolf Shipyard

News Letter

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the installation of Samson, the second of the two cranes at Hardland and Wolf Shipyard.  Together, Samson and Goliath have become more much that important structures in the building and repair of ships.  Over the past half century, they have become a brand symbol for Northern Ireland.

Transcript

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

00:08In that time I must have painted approximately a thousand paintings of the cranes on the

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

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

00:31frustrated me. So when you're trying to paint local country scenes like Scrabble and Mourne

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

00:44So my wife then said to me why don't you start painting images of the cranes? So

00:54with your past employment and your family history it would be really nice. My first image

01:02in my head was of a crane hanging on somebody's wall. Who on earth is going to want to have

01:11large paintings or any type of painting hanging on the walls of the cranes? So I thought to myself

01:21I'll give it a go. My first title and the first location that I was going to paint from was the

01:27top of D Street watching the men walking out from the shipyard and the title of that was

01:36Waiting for Madonna. After painting them I went to a gallery out in Hollywood and they took

01:44three away initially and they sold within the first month and they invited me to supply more

01:55that led then to an exhibition in 2009. The exhibition was a sellout from

02:05from me painting as a hobby artist to professional painter. I have painted approximately a thousand

02:12paintings so much so that it got me the exposure to the Titanic Hotel when it was being converted

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

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

02:39It's capturing a moment in time when either maybe a family member may have worked there

02:46and there may have been an individual who was quite prominent in the family and maybe sadly

02:53no longer there and they just want something to to remember. To me now that I've been living up

02:59in Belfast now for almost 30 years Belfast is home either you're coming in by boat or you're

03:07flying in or you're coming down from a cave hill area and you just you know you're home

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

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