Viger Station:

The Montreal Urban Sketchers met up the other day at Viger Square, a newly renovated park between the historic Viger Station (built in 1898 and named after Jacques Viger, the first Mayor of Montreal) and the CHUM, our new downtown mega-hospital.

I’ve been very spotty with USK meetups the last few years, but I had to show up for this classic Canadian Pacific Railway building. Our local station is probably less famous than another CPR Hotel built by architect Bruce Price; the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, which I’ve sketched many times.

Today, the Frontenac is still a bustling hotel, but the Viger has been remade as a tech-business hub. Instead of trains, they do e-commerce in there :) I guess that’s somewhat ironic, but also somewhat fitting.

I grew up in Alberta, and the historic CPR hotels, the Fairmont in Edmonton, the Banff Springs, and the Chateau Lake Louise are iconic memories. Frankly, they’re some of the only long-standing Canadian history in these towns :)

On a personal note, my grandfather was a CPR Section Man. His job meant spending days on his own, travelling remote sections of Southern Alberta by handcar. A little sled that rode the rails via muscle power. One of my grandad’s trophies was an old steel thermos, bent in half by a train he dodged at the last second. The family always sent him artwork of trains for his birthday, which hung in their little place on South Railway Street, Medicine Hat, where I spent most of my summers as a child. They were close enough to the station their apartment would rattle and hum when trains passed in the night.

My memory is, one of the perks of his pension was that family could travel for free? Or at least that’s how I remember it. I was still a kid when passenger rail in Alberta essentially ended as a useful mode of transportation.

So, here’s an old-favorite sketch of the Gare Viger from 2016.

Now; my painting today is half-sheet (15×22″) and this little one is only 5.5 x 6.5″ (part of a ‘Marathon of Miniatures‘) so this is not a fair comparison at all! But, I’ll leave it up to you to say; Am I improving as a painter, or losing it in my old age???

Hah! (Fishing for compliments much?)

I’ll be the first to admit that my sketches are perhaps losing some sharpness. Not quite as crisply illustrated. I no longer look for the most detailed possible subject, so I can sink hours into drawing the ornamentation. Every year I have less and less patience for drawing details. Even less respect for perspective :) I’ve never been about that :)

This one took a couple hours, but I’ve never worked slower to be honest! My new thing is taking my time, snacking as I go, having a drink, (I really miss caffeinated drinks, but I can’t anymore!) I like to fiddle with the drawing. I draw and erase now! I actually allow myself an eraser! Full circle. I used to do complex under drawings back in the day, even ink over them and erase; then I banned that, and there was a multi-year phase of no drawings allowed; and now I’m back to drawings. These days I like to plan what I’m going to shape-weld into a single mass; where I’m going to make edges with dark-against-light; plan how I’m going to make the thing *look* spontaneous; then do the whole thing in a few minutes work.

Go slow; to go fast.

I think if you continue to paint 10,15, 20 years on, it’s inevitable to become less labor-focused, less performative, and be more interested in abstraction. You develop your own language. Your own color-sense. The paintings become a personal shorthand. It has to remain interesting inside your own head, even if the work outside becomes less and less accessible to people.

It’s a bit of a curse; but I’ve seen it happen with many many artists before me.

So, thanks for reading and following, and I’m happy to still be out there painting and enjoying the sun while it lasts. This might be both the first, and the final Plein Air of 2024!