M. Sign : Quand les Principales Rues de Montréal Deviennent une Toile pour L'artiste Dave Arnold

Dave Arnold is now synonymous with the art of hand-painted signage in Montreal. However, when he first began approaching local businesses in 2009 under the name Mr. Sign, he didn’t realize he was preserving something old and irreplaceably human in the city.

Armed with a toolkit of brushes and developing skills, his early efforts earned him $200 and a steak dinner. That’s since evolved into a 15-year career, during which he has designed many of Montreal’s most iconic signs, defining modern-day institutions through the time-honoured craft of hand-painted signage.

Today, Mr. Sign designs join the annals of artists and their works which visually represent the city’s identity. Dave may not put it in these grandiose terms, but: His works distill complex cultural, historical, and social elements into single, recognizable images that convey meanings beyond words.

Both classic and modern, they anchor historical moments and reflect the city’s heritage. Despite their seemingly old-fashioned nature, they connect the past, present, and future of Montreal, establishing a sense of place and belonging for anyone looking at them and seeing their city reflected back.

When a city’s main street is your canvas

His Saint-Henri workshop, ironically, lacks any signage indicating its location. However, once you step inside, the time Dave Arnold has spent appreciating, understanding, and developing his art becomes immediately clear.

Located under the shadow of a freeway, his loft space inside a former red-brick factory is filled with surfaces both dusty and paint-spattered. It’s a scene of organized chaos, adorned with scribbled notes, tchotchkes, kitsch, and antiques collected over the years.

From this space, Dave has gradually built what he often refers to, with tongue in cheek, as a ‘design empire.’ His one-man visual arts and design company has achieved unpredictable success, despite its feast-or-famine approach to making money.

“I think what captivated me the most was spreading my artwork—finding ways to get more people to see what I was able to do. The idea of putting artwork on public display was exciting then, and it still is to this day—especially when my canvas is on the main street,” Dave says.

You’ll know it when you see it: Shaping Montreal’s visual landscape

Despite the reputation Dave has developed over the years, he’s like any artist working in the field of hand-painted signage and hand lettering—his work won’t bear a signature.

“I've always steered away from signing my work because I liked the idea that if I do work for your place, I’m passing it off to you. It’s no longer mine; it’s now yours,” he says.

“But even then, is there some part of me in the work that differentiates it from someone else's? In any creative endeavour, I believe there's always a trace of the artist, even if you try your best to remove yourself from the final product. It will always seep through.”

His first famous gig came after asking chefs David McMillan and Frédéric Morin if they wanted a Christmas scene painted on their window. Although that idea was rejected, it led to him painting what is now an iconic logo that has lasted for years.

From there, one project led to another: His works in Saint-Henri—at places like Sumac, Nora Gray, Tuck Shop, Stem Bar, and Bar Courcelle—have since spread throughout the city. His work can be found at North Star Machines À Piastres’s pinball bar, Icehouse, and Bar Vivar in the Plateau; Larrys and Lawrence, Bar Le Sparrow, and Le Plongeoir in Mile End; Marconi in Mile-Ex; Foxy in Griffintown; Dandy and Tittle Tattle/Gargamelle in Old Montreal; Maison Halwa Patisserie and Brasserie Bernard in Outremont; and NDG Luncheonette in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

So many of these names evoke the city’s most (in)famous places to see and be seen, to eat and to drink. In some ways, it’s almost been a good luck charm (knock on wood), as few of the businesses he’s painted for have folded.

As for why he focuses on restaurants and bars, Dave found kinship with lifers in hospitality. His focus on art resonated with places where food wouldn’t be fast, cheap, or easy, but would instead demonstrate craftsmanship.

An identity for a Dépanneur

When we caught up with Dave, we wanted to tap into his experience with a collaboration: Could he design something for us and The Main’s online shop, The Dépanneur?

“The Main’s a well-known online magazine in Montreal with its eyes and ears on all kinds of exciting stuff in the city, and they asked me to create a unique image that would speak to and connect with Montrealers, and really, bring a smile to their face. And for me? If you can even bring people a nanosecond of joy, it helps.”

A little bit like the rubber hose animation style found in the golden age of American cartoons, or maybe a surreal form of Walt Disney, Dave says the design makes light of precise architectural drawings to make it more eye-catching. That, and he kept all those classic details you see in deps, from leaving a string of Christmas lights up in the window to how they’ll often leave a bunch of beer ads from 1992 blocking out sunlight.

“It’s that old-timey general store vibe. The fun of a dep is its grimy dust on top of fridges, room temperature cheese, maybe; it’s not meant to be some well-curated place necessarily. The Main’s shop is an homage to that,” Dave says.

“There’s a smorgasbord of stuff on there to check on The Main’s shop, a lot like the variety stores or bodegas in the rest of Canada or the States.”

“And the name’s so apropos: If you’re arriving to this city from out of province like me, the word ‘dep’ is once the first words you learn that’s part of the local lexicon. And it’s such a tidy, small word that transcends the English-French divide here.”

“So, the design’s featured on totes and T-shirts that are available on their online shop, the Dépanneur. The breakthrough came from how an inanimate object can get some personality—an old shoe, a brick, you name it—by adding a face and bringing it to life.”

What makes Mr. Sign who he is?

Although Dave may not sign his expressions of others’ identities, he remains steadfast in his belief that what he does and how he paints is something no one else can quite reproduce. There’s always a small trace of him in his work.

“Everyone has their definition of what a straight line or corner looks like. Some people’s hands shake a bit; others are dead steady. That’s what I love about creativity and artwork—whatever it is, the artist acts as a filter for everything they’ve ever seen in the world. It all filters through you, and the way you express it is your art.