Last Snow and Ice, Ride to the Old Port

With the snow mostly melted and temperature above zero yesterday, I managed to get out for a good painting trip on my bike towards the east part of the Lachine canal and as far as Old Port. It helps to have a brief history of the Lachine canal, it was once an industrial conduit bringing supplies and goods by boat to and from the many factories that lined the canal. As the manufacturing industry declined the canal went into disuse and became a place to illegally dump garbage. Right around the time I arrived in Montreal, early 2000's, they had cleared the canal and approved the land for rezoning into condos. Many of the factories were retrofitted into high end condos, or bulldozed and built anew. Unfortunately the canal itself remains contaminated, with level 4 heavy metals on the bottom. In the painting, you can see the canal, still frozen over with a thinning sheet of ice. In the background are the condos, downtown skyscrapers, and thousands of windows. Montreal General hospital is on mount royal in the distance. 

Thinning Ice on Lachine Canal, watercolour 6 x 8" cold press, April 2022 (No. 2999a)

 

At the east end of the canal it flows into the great Peel Basin, which would have been use as a docking site for big ships delivering goods into the city of Montreal. Now it is surrounded by pedestrian paths and seating areas. The views are great, and I am glad the kept this feature in place to reduce the congestion downtown, and to give the seagulls and ducks a place to hang out. The scene seemed impossible to paint, remember, there is no white paint in watercolour! So I painted the water, which was at its lowest point and mud islands were showing through, leaving little slots along the way for the seagull shapes. The background was a rough abstraction of the city and some of the pedestrian areas. Try to imagine the distinctive sound of seagulls and you get the full experience.

Seagulls on the Peel Basin, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2022 (No. 3086)

 

Nothing was easy to paint in this area of Montreal. Every scene had a complex background filled with buildings and the artist's bane, windows! I applied most of the windows as a dark feature over a lighter background, and just varied the sized and shapes to give variety. This scene was focused on the bike path going up an over a small hill, and a monstrous billboard installment that is placed for the cars coming into the city. You can see the elevated highway nestled up in the buildings, with a few cars and trucks zooming by. As usual I had to put my initials on the billboard.

Path and Billboard, downtown Montreal, watercolour 6 x 8" cold press, April 2022 (No. 3000a !!!)

This was the 3000th numbered painting, but there are closer to 3500 chronologically because I paint on the backs, and I pile them in the box out of sequence. The big ones on bottom, the little on top otherwise the stack falls over and paintings get bent. I started using boxes instead of portfolios for any painting less than 9 x 12.

 

Finally I got as far as the Old Port, with the wind behind me the whole time it was an easy ride, although I knew the ride back would be tough. I am pretty sure this is pont de la Concorde, a small bridge that connects the city to the St. Helen's Island that they built for Expo67. There is a bike path along that bridge going to the island, and just a few cars now and then. In the painting, I seemed to have nailed the bridge colours, they were a smoky blue-grey with a green trim, and pale concrete pillars. I painted the whole background and foreground first, then put the trees over top. Overlaying works with the earth paints. The pile of snow in the foreground was an interesting mix of white, blue, grey and peppery textures from the gravel. The river is a cool colour here, turquoise blue with undertones of yellowish.

Last Snow Concorde Bridge, Old Port, watercolour 6 x 8" cold press, April 2022 (No. 3005)