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For Patric Ryan, every piece of art he creates tells a story; and every artwork carries a part of his life story in it.

The Bruce Peninsula artist has a dozen of his works featured in the Victoria Park Gallery in Kincardine until the end of May.

"I produced 24 watercolours for Hank and Thelma Biutendyk who owned the Highland Cove Marina, creators of the seafood restaurant on the old Newfoundland freighter, the 'Avalon Voyager II'," he recalls.

"Over the next 33 years, due to the subsequent association with the 'Avalon Voyager,' I would produce, in addition to the visual pieces to date, five novels, two award-winning screenplays, and several short stories. The process of art and writing continues. The experience gained in the early years has also influenced our personal marine history; building and sailing East Coast-influenced vessels."

But back to the story ...

In the fall of 1980, Ryan was a crew member on the Tobermory fishing boat, the "W.A. Speares," with Peter Dean as skipper.

"But for circumstances, I would have been crew on the 'Avalon Voyager II' on the morning of Oct. 30," he says. "Instead, we, the crew of the 'W.A. Speares', in a fall gale, rescued the crew of the 'Avalon Voyageur' from the rocks of Cape Hurd Channel near Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula."

His paintings also survived the wreck.

"We received the Governor General's Medal of Bravery, but more important, newly-married, my wife, Dorie, and I were asked by Hank and Thelma to accompany them to Newfoundland to help with the restoration of the 'Clarenville,' sistership to, and replacement for, the 'Avalon Voyager II'."

In the winter of 1981, they travelled with their two sea dogs and cat to Newfoundland, worked on the "Clarenville," bought a fishing schooner of their own, and commenced their married life very much under the spell of the Newfoundland mystic.

"It's important to note that we didn't go to Newfoundland to gather material for a body of artwork," says Ryan. "The artworks and the writings are a happy consequence of our adventures in Newfoundland, the return voyage and several trips back to The Rock to visit the many friends we made during the process. The 'Clarenville' burned in Owen Sound Harbour in 1990, but my paintings survived, again."

Ryan's bright and colourful paintings grace the Victoria Park Gallery in Kincardine, and each has a narrative.

Some of the more striking ones include the following:

"Make 'n' Break Cemetery" - "We lived with a retired fisherman named George Collins. From our bedroom window we had a view of this old derelict, given up for dead, with some rusty engines for headstones. We called it George's Boat and could walk out to it at low tide. We have a make 'n' break engine in one of the boats we built in 1990. It's the red and green one on the right."

"Hurricane Comin' #2" - "Bert Stuckless General Merchant - the typical store where Dorie and I bought our groceries and some marine supplies while in Durrell."

"Sophie and Sarina" - "The imaginary schooner named for our grown daughters who we hauled back to Newfoundland in the 1980s and '90s to show them off to our friends. Newfoundlanders love children more than boats. The red and green windlass is the one on the deck of our fishing schooner, very much a real relic."

"Clearing Out At Speed" - "The only way for an engineless schooner to make an offing if the winds are adverse. My romantic vision of a Grand Banks schooner heading out to challenge the winter Atlantic. As Stan Rogers sings, 'There's no romance on a cold winter ocean when the gale sings an awful song ...' And many of those wonderful sailing ships and their hard-nosed crews never returned. The coasts of Newfoundland and the maritimes, from Labrador to Gloucester, are strewn with the bones of schooners and fishermen. We brought home one of the few survivors, then sent her off to Alaska fishing again."

Patric Ryan

Currently, Ryan is writing a novel about the loss of the "Avalon Voyager II" and the Newfoundland years, with illustrations.

"I had to write this book," he says. "It's going to be called 'Closing the Circle' or 'Closing Circles'. I'm not sure yet. But it wasn't until I started writing this book that I began really thinking about my childhood and why my life is so tied in with boats."

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011