An artist has expressed his love for Douglas in a large collection of street scenes and landscapes, showing both the good side and the hidden streets.

Ian Coulson opened his exhibition ’Douglas In Passing’ at the former Top Shop store on Strand Street, Douglas, last week.

The paintings, created to accompany a new book of the same name, written by author Valerie Cottle, all feature empty or sparsely populated streets of Douglas and are labelled by Ian as both a ’snapshot of a moment in time’ and a ’love story’ to the capital.

Scenes of building sites and impressive walls of scaffolding, or dirty and unpainted back streets, are treated with as much reverence as the impressive Victorian buildings and grand facades or well-known places for people to visit.

Ian began painting the streets of Douglas five years ago after he was struck by feelings of melancholic nostalgia when walking in the rain.

’I started after I went out on Christmas Day, after a dinner, and I was feeling a bit down in the dumps, for whatever reason,’ said Ian.

’I was the only person around and it had just started to rain. I just thought the place looked incredible and I wanted to paint it.

’From there I carried on, painting a lot of street scenes around Douglas.’

Ian said that he wanted to pay his own tribute to Douglas as a place that the vast majority on the island have some sort of connection with, and also to the almost timeless look of the streets and houses.

He also looks back fondly at the Douglas he knew growing up as a young art student.

’I put a lot of things into these pictures,’ he said.

’Like it or not, we are all connected with Douglas. I think there is a sentimental connection between all of the past generations of people who have lived here and this generation.

We are all walking along the same streets, going up the same hills.

’When I was an adolescent, I felt like I caught the end of mass tourism.

’There was music in every bar, girls everywhere, people all over the place. It was just wonderful.

’The street out there, Strand Street, was a sea of people moving backwards and forwards. The smell of candy floss and rock, people frying burgers, you were on sensory overload.

’Everything was about being in love and I was in love with Douglas just as much as I was with the girl I’d met that day.’

Ian drew his own comparisons with the work of Rembrant, which he explains in the foreword of ’Douglas In Passing’, and also from his old artistic mentor, the celebrated artist Norman Sayle.

He painted each of these pictures on Norman’s old watercolour paper, and compared his own feelings stirred up by his images to similar paintings created by Norman.

He compared his own sense of happiness and wonderment with what he describes as the weight of nostalgia which weighed heavily on Norman.

’Our previous generations have handed Douglas over to us and now it’s our turn to look after it,’ he added.

’It’s exactly as it was when I grew up and it’s about passing on the sense of belonging and positive enjoyment about this place.’

The book ’Douglas in Passing’, which features a series of real or imagined stories about real-life Douglas characters, written by Valerie Cottle, accompanied by Ian’s paintings, is available at all local book shops.