Rocktide & Sandpiper Shadows

Location: near 5688 Cowrie St.

Title, Date: Rocktide, 2008 & Sandpiper Shadows, 2008

Artists: Jan Poynter (with assistance from students Jessica Pollard & Allegra Tandy)

Medium: Acrylic paint

As part of a Sechelt Downtown Revitalization Plan, the District of Sechelt and BC Hydro put out a call for artists to decorate a number of utility boxes. Local artist Jan Poynter was awarded the project, and ‘driftwood’ was the theme selected. Each of the boxes depicts different ‘phases’ of driftwood - from log boom, to stranded high tide logs, to small bits of driftwood among the stones. All of the painted utility boxes in this series are based on actual waterfront scenes in Sechelt. 

SandpiperShadows is the smallest of the murals in the utility box series. This box is painted with a delightful beach scene. Several sandpiper birds explore the beach for something to eat, leaving faint footprints prints in the sand. At the bottom of the painting, vibrant blue waters fill the spaces between rounded beach rocks and weathered driftwood.  The artist used a combination of layered colors of paint under a transparent glaze for the shadows of the birds, wood and stone forms.

Near to SandpiperShadows is the larger painting titled Rocktide. This box is painted with a view of the local granite shoreline cliffs. The green, orange and black markings on the bottom of the rocks are created naturally by algae, salt and dark shells.  In the foreground are logs stranded between rocks after high tide, or a storm. Behind these are the bright-barked Arbutus trees and deep green leaves of the Coastal forest.

Born 1957 in Victoria, B.C., artist Jan Poynter majored in Painting and Printmaking at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art Design) and continued in Art Education at the University of British Columbia. Poynter now works as a professional artist, illustrator, and art instructor in Gibsons, BC.