"[to live with danger] is manifested in the reluctance or inability of a person to envision his own death even though he sees the threat all around him. This trait enables us, despite the statistics of traffic deaths, to drive with peace of mind.” [1]

-Margaret Surrey per Philip Surrey

Philip Surrey is one of Canada’s most important post World War ll figurative artists.  He is an artist worthy of study in the company of Alex Colville and  Jean Paul Lemieux . This pair of paintings is inspired by the construction of the Decarie Expressway, likely at the access ramp at Sherbrooke Street, a 10 minute walk west of his home. Creatively, we know of Surrey’s laborious evolution of his paintings, often resolving compositions over numerous stages, including drawings, watercolours, and oil paint, often in various sizes. Although almost identical in composition, these Decarie paintings demonstrate his experiments with different but consistently artificial and electric light to create a mood. The cranes, painted loosely with mechanical and monstrous arms, serve to create a beastly presence, even hammerlike in their depiction. The paintings are indicative of the artist’s psychological preoccupation and resentment of cars, a seemingly exponential growth of vehicle traffic in the Post WWII era and the threat in Surrey’s mind they posed.

The Decarie Expressway is symbolic of car traffic and the increase in car traffic in Surrey’s Montreal during the post WWII period. Built in time for Montreal’s Expo 67, the expressway was developed to expedite the drive from the suburbs to downtown and is today one of the most congested roads in Quebec, handling more than twice the traffic originally projected. Built below the traditional road grade, there are three lanes in each direction and bordered by concrete walls and hosts more than double the traffic flow for which it was designed.

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Footnote: 

[1] Margaret Surrey, Biographical notes of Philip Surrey, Philip and Margaret Day Fonds, P85A, National Archives of Canada, Estate Philip Surrey, 141