When artist Ellen Bradshaw heard the news that the Fulton Fish Market would move to the Bronx from South Street, she set out to save it – on canvas. On an April morning last year, she rose at 3:30 and shot six rolls of film to capture this dark slice of New York.

Her aim was to capture the physical structure of the market, but also the moody Manhattan feeling of the area and the tough characters who work there. The latter category included South Street Annie, an elderly woman who hawks newspapers and cigarettes and lives among the fishmongers. Mrs. Bradshaw then spent the next year rising at 5 a.m. – “I’m an early bird,” she said – to trek up to her studio on West 13th Street to produce 21 oil paintings, ranging in size from 8 inches by 10 inches to 36 by 48 inches. Her show, “A Farewell Tribute to the Fulton Fish Market (1822-2005),” which includes some older work, is now on view at Pleiades Gallery of Contemporary Art.

Mrs. Bradshaw typically creates paintings in a series and has a penchant for cityscapes. “I usually pick a theme and do a series for a show,” she said. “My last one was ‘New York Haunts,’ and it was of all of the oldest bars, taverns, and restaurants in New York. Before that was ‘Night Moods,’ all night paintings of New York.”

Mrs. Bradshaw has been a member of Pleiades since 1999, and she has been the organization’s president since 2000. “It’s an artist-run gallery. I love the place. I’ve shown at commercial galleries,and I like this much more.You feel like you’re in control,” she said.

Though the fish market project was professional, it was also deeply personal. After Mrs. Bradshaw graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1984, she found a job at a clothing store in the Seaport neighborhood. Across the street was McDuffee’s Irish Coffee House, and in that tavern she met her husband, Joe Bradshaw. She moved into his apartment in Southbridge Towers, a Mitchell-Lama building, where the couple lived for 18 years. And from that perch, she watched the neighborhood slowly change. Once dotted with gritty buildings, the Seaport is now full of upscale luxury condos, a mall, and the Heartland Brewery.

Despite all the changes, a sense of neighborliness among the residents – many of whom, like Ms. Bradshaw’s husband, had spent most or all of their lives there – pervaded the Seaport. The omnipresent fish market, with its crusty characters and briny redolence, defined the area’s character.

To capture that, Mrs. Bradshaw turned, as she always does, to the Ashcan painters. Her primary influences are artists like Robert Henri, George Bellows, and Edward Hopper, who created portraits of city people without turning a blind eye to the poverty, dirt, and sometimes unpleasant aspects of urban life. “The real in-your-face New York – it’s not prettified. It’s that moment in time,” she said.

But how’s the market for realism? Though abstract art may be dominating the New York art scene, Mrs. Bradshaw isn’t worried. “I have my own collectors and since I do New York, a lot of New Yorkers enjoy my paintings,” she said. “A lot of first-time art buyers purchase my paintings because they’re easily accessible. I think my art actually sells better than abstract, actually.”

Perhaps because of how deeply personal this project was, completing it was an intensely vivid experience. Mrs. Bradshaw doesn’t plan on packing up and leaving her neighborhood anytime soon, now that the market is gone. But she said, “It’s wiped out. It’s a really strange feeling for everyone who’s lived in the neighborhood for a while. It just feels like we’ve lost something.”

The new market is up and running in the Bronx. And South Street Annie is up there with it, Mrs. Bradshaw said. Does she plan to visit the new fish market? “Probably not.”

Until April 22 (530 W. 25th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 646-230-0056).