Tribute to Scan, a great Montreal writer

On Cabot street, part of the Sud-Oest neighborhood in Montreal, there is a long factory made of cinder blocks that has an enormous mural. It stretches about a city block, and looks to be at least 4 stories tall at least. I've often wanted to paint the scene because it appeared to feature a prominent graffiti artist, there is a large portrat of him holding a spray-paint can at the beginnig of the mural. Today I was on the location and noticed a big engraved metal plaque, the kind you see for historically important locations, and it told the story of 'Scan' who died in 2017, he was widely considered to be one of the greatest graffiti artist of all time and it seemed up to a hundred colleagues from Montreal, Canada and around the world had joined to make this monumental mural. Most of the wall is painted in turquoise, with white outlines and other designs throughout. To tackle such a scene I had to find a composition, and some kind of connection to the landscape... I rarely paint other people's artwork out of respect, so here I intgrated their ideas with my ideas. Graffiti artists put paint on the wall, but I put the wall onto my paintings!

When I saw the saturated red fire hydrant with yellow-green cap and orange-yellow snow marker (when the snow falls this allows the hydrant to be found in the winter if its needed), then I knew it would work, along with the cinder block textures, barred window, and one of many air conditioner units. Painting something like this on location leaves no room for errors, I had to establish the outline with a small brush, then fill in the details before applying a pale yellow wash, letting it dry mostly, then applying the turquoise layer which really pulled everything together. I added the letters 'SCAN' in the center of the composition which is barely discernable, but that was the idea. 
 

If you want to know more, or see the work of Scan, I found a link telling the whole story on a web site called wall-2-wall Montreal. Reading that link, I learned that graffiti artists prefer to call themselves 'writers', and they produce burners, tags, and throws. I don't know what those words mean but I'll look into it. Hey, if there were ever a wall to paint on (legally) I would be up for it. Check out The End of Art is Art (Ecipse Flowers). I did meet a 'writer' once, he was walking along the train track path when I painted Train Crossing, in fact, he talked to me for awhile and admired the painting and told me he paints on walls, I had included him in the Train Crossing painting, just a simple blue-clad figure in the distance. 

Tribute to Scan, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Urban Montreal: Rue Cabot area

For some good scenery of urban Montreal, rue Cabot is an accesible location just off of the Lachine canal bike path near the Passerelle Côte-Saint-Paul bike and pedestrian bridge that runs next to the highway. For this painting, I captured the Lachine canal with its famous black railings, with elaborate concrete-work and pigeons. Oh yeah, and a few autumn colours with a yellow and a red tree growing out of the old stone wall of the canal. As usual, I converted the local Graffiti into my own initials and year (PJD 25). Its kind of fun trying to emulate graffiti artists, their work (vandalism) can be very elaborate. In doing so, I get to be a graffiti artist without wrecking anything! 

Yellow green and turquoise, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

As most Montrealers in the area know, some intrepid artists painted part of the old derelict malt factory pink with green trim. I did a good one on that location of the Old Canada Malt Silos, albeit without a view of the pink house. And earlier this summer, rather incredibly, I saw people sitting on the roof of that thing driking beers which seemed absurdly dangerous.  

Pink house blue-green factory, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Most of the autumn colours are dark yellow, olive, brown and maroon this year, no spectacular oranges or bright reds. To make up for it, as you can tell from reading the blog post, I found colours elsewhere, like this giant violet graffiti tag. Its part of an abandonded factory that the city is planning to develop into some kind of urban resisdential area. I painted this location a few times, for example I did an interpretive painting on location last year called Zen Factory. 

PJD in violet, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

The whole area around rue Cabot, which I believe is part of the Sud-Ouest (South-West) neighborhood, are factories and warehouses with just a few houses here and there. It seems to be a graffiti hotspot, with many colourful tags, and entire walls covered in street art. The rear side of this factory was a fascinating tapestry of shapes and textures. It must have had large windows at one time that were mostly boarded up and painted over. Multi-coloured bricks were plastered with bubbly graffiti tags in blue, green, yellow, pink and black. I painted fast here because dry dirt was blowing and it didn't seem to healthy to be standing around for too long. Usually we only get dry dirt clouds in the Spring, but worry not, there are like 7 days of rain predicted for us. 

Rear Factory tapestry, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 

Frédéric Back Park, Autumn Views

When I was looking into places to see the stars in Montreal at night, I read about Frédéric Back Park up in Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension. I rode my bike there today and made some paintings of the unusual landscape and scenery. This park used to be a massive quarry which became a landfill for Montreal's garbage for decades. It has now been covered up and a park was built. Dotting the landscape are these spheres with one quarter cut out, a glass window on a curved door invites you to look in. In fact, they mowed paths so that people can walk up and look and take pictures. I put a yellow smiley-face behind the glass window to suggest someone is in there!  I got that idea from my Lemon Sunset abstract paintings, but the rest of the scene is pretty much how I saw it. Planes were going by on their way to land at the airport. 

Sphere and plane, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Here is the view that welcomes you upon arrival to the park from Rue Paul Boutet. The trees were all manner of yellow, with a bit of red and olive mixed in. I used a lot of Bismuth Vanadate yellow (PY184), its an opaque paint good for bright yellow or chartreuse (lime) colours. 

Viewpoint Frédéric Back Park, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Just beside this park is the massive Cirque du Soleil office and warehouse where they presumably make and store all the circus supplies. In the background of this painting, behind the trees you can see part of the structure. I was walking with my bike down this path, when the curved tree caught my attention, it really made the composition work. The quarry wall was done with a mix of wet in wet and dry brush technique. It may look all brown, but I varied the hue angle (colour) of the neutrals according to what I saw. This is a neat one, and reminiscent of Van Gogh's Tree Roots painting which I have always admired and tried to find similar scenes.  

Trees on quarry wall, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

I didn't paint as much as usual last week due to a grant that was due... more of those deadlines! When I got back to the blog, suddenly I have hundreds of views! It seems to have stemmed from the Jacques Cartier night scenes blog, a lot of people looked at that one which feels great. Of course, thousands on thousands of people have probably seen me painting in Montreal as they drive or walk by... I'm the guy standing next to his bike painting out of the rear bike bag. As mentioned, Frédéric Back Park was a landfill, which creates large amounts of methane. To make the area safe for people, they encased these methane pipes in the spheres... there were hundreds of them all over, sitting in amongst some beautiful fields of wildflowers and trees. I may have embellished this one a little... 

Another arrival, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

On the way out I rode around the entire quarry on the bike/walking path and saw this view of the far quarry wall and a very old pylon sitting up on the ledge. There is a fence in between me and the scene which I omitted. Never has one brush stroke been so important in a painting... after doing a thin outline with a paint brush (I don't use pencil or pen at all), then I applied one brush load of pale red-orange (pyrol orange PO73) to the pylon. Since the rest of the painting is brown and dark yellow it is the only source of high-chroma colour (bright). Anyways, I've painted a lot of pylons before but this one might be Montreal's oldest pylon.  

Old pylon quarry view, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Belvédère Outremont sunset view

To better paint the night sky including moon and stars I did a little reading on astronomy and stargazing in Montreal. The fact is, Montreal is in a high 'light pollution' area rating a 9 out of 10 on the scale, making it one of the worst places to see stars at night. But local astronmers listed two locations where the view was a bit better including this spot, called the Belvédère Outremont, and the large park that used to be a landfill in the north east of town (Frédéric Back Park). Today I went to Belvédère Outremont after work and found a large clearing with rock slabs, chairs for lounging, and a wide open view to the west northwest direction. Its one of the few places that the city clears trees around the mountain, so as to not block the view. Several people arrived and snapped some pics with their smart phones. 

West view sunset realist, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

In the first painting I used a realist approach by painting the background, letting it dry, then over-painting the clouds and trees. In this version, I used an impressionist technique where I painted the trees first, capturing all the detail in the branches, trunks and leaves, then daubed in the surrounding sky and background vista. In the winter I will have to paint something like this most of the time since the paint wont dry fast enough. Even today, I did the background of the other two paintings, and did this one while they dried. 

West view sunset impressionist watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

This painting uses a surreal, colour-splash technique to create vibrant colour and energy. Its never clear how it will work out, in the midst of painting, I really thought it was a disaster and a waste of paper, but then I recalled the Cloud over Trenholme park painting, one of my favorites of all time. In today's painting, surprising colour blooms formed in the clouds and trees which added a mysterious texture to the scene. So I used three different treatments today of the same scene, realism, impressionism and surrealism. If I can make it back to this location in the winter I think it would be a good one. 

West view autumn sunset, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 

Gravel field botanicals

Painting around the gravel field, I found an old disused asphalt road that stretched for several kilometers to the east. The road was surrounded by fields of dry grass and aspen tree saplings, with thousands upon thousands of small white daisies and other occasional purple or yellow flowers. I stopped to make a painting of one small yellow flower and a star-shaped green plant, with a small bee on the flower. The two plants were growing out of a pothole in the asphalt, which I depicted in black and white. 

Yellow flower green plant bee, watercolour 7.5 x 11" cold press, October 2025

There were thousands upon thousands of these, so I made a close-up of just one plant at the same location. This time, I filled in the gravel and asphalt with a grey wash toned blue to yellowish, then daubed in the yellow centers (PY154 + PY43), followed by some foliage and shadow detailing. I dont often paint botanical close-ups, but today the scenes at the gravel field were all pretty much similar, it was just interesting to see nature coming back on its own. I did another one of cosmos flowers in the gravel field.  

Daisies asphalt, watercolour 7.5 x 11" cold press, October 2025 

Old Turcot trainyard gravel fields

Down where the old Turcot trainyards used to be, there is a great expanse of gravel stretching from the Rue st Jacques bridge all the way east to the Turcot interchange, a distance of about 3 km. I painted a few scenes there back in June when there were thousands of yellow flowers. Today I headed back down there and made this panorama scene of the gravel field with its natural regrowth, and the highway and train in the background, with NDG up on the escarpment. The city has a massive plan, with Federal funding, to renaturalize the whole esccarpment area including these gravel fields. I found a link to the full plan in a gazette article, it was a 75 page pdf document filled with maps, pictures and plans. 

Gravel field panorama, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

Ever wonder where Concrete dividers go when they die? I never did, but got the answer today! In the gravel fields there is an area filled with rows of neatly stacked concrete dividers, with a tall pile of the broken ones lying at the end. A pylon had also passed away. Getting the concrete to look heavy and textural took many different techniques and layers. It does truly look like a pile of concrete dividers with a pylon. 

Concrete divider pile, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 

Here is another scene from the same location, but looking towards the neat stack of concrete dividers. The sun was coming down from left to right here, which cast a neat blueish shadow on the sun-bleached rocks. The plan for this area is to turn it into a forest with some wetlands, and a meandering walking path. It sounds fine, but I don't mind it the way it is, silent and no people around. Given enough time, a forest will grow up, I saw thousands of aspen trees probably from the canal trees nearby. 

Concrete divider stacks, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025  

Vacant lot renaturalization project?

Along st Jacques street, which runs parallel with the NDG escarpment, there are many autoshops, light industrial, and parking lots, not to mention the Enterprise car rental. Nearby, a large vacant lot has been growing wild for a few years now. I did a sunset scene there, and a few scenes just after the snow started to thaw. In the last painting on the snow thaw blog I did a scene of the adjacent lot which was full to the brim with trucks and dumpsters. Today, the main lot was really overgrown with a small forest almost, while the adjacent lot was completely cleared out of all trucks and dumpsters and trash. The city recently got 25 million to renaturalize the escarpment forest and I suspect this is part of the plan. In the painting, I showed the bright sun hiding behind a tree, with the golden-green field that is coming up through the gravel and asphalt. Of course, it could just be another condo project, time will tell!

Sun on vacant lot field, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025

In the background of this unusual scene you can see a very weird condo they built to kind of look like a castle, with an even weirder truck in the middle-ground. The truck was some kind of heavy utility truck with a lot of hydraulics, it may have been for cutting down tall tree branches, or lifting components on construction yards. On the right is the overgrown vacant lot, which has filled in to become a field with a small forest in the middle. I also stopped by Terry Fox park and pulled more creeper vines off the trees, they are doing a lot better now, I cut a lot of the creeper vines over the last few years. 

Weird truck condo overgrown lot, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025