EDMONTON -- An Edmonton painter is renewing her efforts to find the subject of one of her photographs more than a decade ago.
It was a warm summer day in 2003. Marjorie Dagg had just bought a new 35mm camera, so she decided to go to Hawrelak Park and test it out.
She went all around the park taking photos, and on the south end, Dagg saw a little girl feeding birds.
"The mother was just behind her with a stroller, and I thought, 'Oh my gosh, so colourful.'"
Dagg asked if she could take photos, and the little girl approved.
"I took five or six pictures of her and they're all really good, but I particularly liked this one because she was crouched and looking at them," Dagg told CTV News Edmonton.
"She was the perfect subject, because she was so into the location and the birds."
Dagg told the mother she painted at a local art school and she would gift them a print, but they did not have cellphones or pen and paper to exchange information.
Dagg finished painting it in 2005 because she only painted at night when she was home, but she never heard from the mother.
But she kept searching. Dagg did an interview with a local newspaper and printed the story on pamphlets to give away at art shows.
"Quite a few people phoned in, but the picture was black and white and I would say, 'You know what colour were your child’s running shoes or what was the colour of the shirt?' And I never found anybody that had the right information … no one ever did, which was disappointing."
Dagg calls the now 16-year search a mystery. She believes her subject is in her late teens or early 20s, but she still wants to find her to give her the "nice keepsake."
"People always thought it was a great story and how nice it would be to connect with the family."
If you know who the girl in the painting is, contact Dagg here.
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Nicole Weisberg
