Wanda Szubielski, a painter who lives in Clayton Park, says she was so moved by the sinking of the Miss Ally and the loss of her crew, that she had to do something.
"When I heard the news about the sunken ship, I was crying," Szubielski said. "I thought ‘My goodness, the people, the families, the children, they suffered a lot,' and they couldn't save her."
The fishing boat capsized in a Feb. 17 storm off Nova Scotia's south shore. The five crew members, all under the age of 33, were lost.
Szubielski began working on a painting to capture the emotion of the moment, her piece, now complete, is called Tragedy at Sea.
"I painted this one very quickly and I put a little warning, a little sign," she said, pointing out a small sign that says ‘Ships Start Here.' "I am talking about the sadness, the suffering, the people they lost their loved ones to the sea."
The painting shows the town of Woods Harbour along the coast with the capsized ship in the foreground. She used an image of the capsized Miss Ally for the fishing vessel, but used her imagination to illustrate the town.
In ‘Tragedy at Sea' Wood Harbour looks disheveled and broken with a clear piece removed on its right side. "You can tell something is missing," she said, pointing at the area.
"When I sell this painting, I would like to donate the money to the fishermen's families," she said at her studio in Clayton Park. "Maybe we could build a nice monument or something for the community to remember them by."
In many of Szubielski's other paintings the sea is a present force, even when the setting isn't near the coastline. She said this is because the power of nature and the ocean in particular shapes our society, even when we don't see it.
"Although I was greatly saddened by what happened, that also compelled me to create something from that feeling," she said. "It took me only a couple of nights to finish ... Normally it takes me about two weeks to finish a piece, but I couldn't stop with this one."
Szubielski is the president of the Nova Scotia Society of Polish Artists. Growing up near the Baltic Sea, she said when she came to Nova Scotia, she was happy to still have the ocean nearby and that it greatly influences her art.
"The sea is so beautiful, but it is also dangerous, we have to be careful," she said.
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