Oil on canvas · 26 × 30″
I was born in Saint John so my feelings toward it go back and include fragments of images and scenes from my earliest years. It is a port, and as such it has a cool, damp, foggy atmosphere. It is also a working class environment, and I recall Dickensian images of accordian players at the intersection of King Street in front of Queen Square, of the 8 hour whistle at the sugar refinery, of naked bulbs burning on cords suspended from ceilings seen at night through windows in the lower south end.
The image here is a translation of a location on the west side, across the harbour. It is an area that housed dock workers and labourers, and had a different quality from the neighbourhood in the downtown. The perspective in this painting is accurate, at least in how I visually interpreted it in watercolour sketches and drawing.
It took two attacks to get the feeling I wanted right- after the first I removed everything below the horizon for a period of germination, and then tried it again.
