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I have painted herring weirs for years.  I keep painting them because I have not run out of things to say about them. 

Herring weirs are structures of poles and netting that are stretched from shore out into the ocean, reaching both below the surface where their nets guide the herring into a trap and up into the sky where the towering poles guide the fishermen.  This practice of catching fish is centuries old. 

Weir Stretching from Shore, 10x3o, 2016, watercolour

Weirs are centuries old, but are disappearing quickly from the shores around here.  My earliest summer memories are of a weir stretching across the narrow bay below my home.  I spent hours there, clinging to the nets as the tide rose and fell, watching the fisherman at his work. This was a salmon research weir.  Every low tide, the weir tender would visit it and check for salmon.  Only after he had done his work was I allowed to enter the weir.  I recently dug out the old family photo albums and here is a photo of me in the weir in 1980 or so:

I never knew what was going to turn up in the weir. The falling tide could leave treasures or trash.  Here I am holding up a little green crab.  I always thought they were treasures.  It was fun to hunt crabs.  (Now I know that they are an invasive species and are truly considered trash. )

As an adult I appreciate the esthetic properties of the weirs as well as their historic relevance.  The herring were a staple of the Maritime diet.  Have you ever eaten sardines from Maine or the Canadian Maritimes?  Up until recently, they would have been caught in a weir.  Now with the advent of seiner ships the inshore herring are all but gone.  And so, too, disappear the weirs.  There are none left in Digby County, and none too that I have been able to find near where I grew up, either.

Lots of things pass from this earth as human practices change, but not all are recorded and preserved.  So to do my part, I paint weirs.

Evening Light, Sandy Cove Weir, 20x22", watercolour

I also appreciate the sheer beauty of them.  There are stark contrasts embodied in weirs.  The horizontal bands of netting are stretched between bare hardwood poles which reach from ocean bed to the sky.  As the enormous tides of the Bay of Fundy rise and fall twice each day, they hide and then reveal walls of netting up to 30 feet high.  The nets can be sheer or opaque, depending on the angle of the light.  The poles may appear white, bleached by the salt, or black, silhouetted against opalescent fog that wraps around the poles and streams through the netting.  Birds, fish, whales and people all make their way into and out of the circular spaces.  Layers of netting overlapping lose their transparency and create a sense of mystery and obscure what may or may not be trapped within. 

Shrouded in Evening Light, 22x30", watercolour

To read more about the herring weirs and their fading practice you can read this article by Jonathan Riley, published in our local Digby Courier back in 2013.  It is interesting to note that this was filed under the business pages.  It might fall under interesting local colour for most of us, but for the fishermen, their weirs were their livelihood, and now they are gone.