Mr. Sign: When Montreal’s main streets become a canvas for artist 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.

“There’s some stuff I’ve done that is strictly reproducing someone’s pre-determined logo. You’d think it would have zero trace of that Dave Arnold touch, but if you asked Joe Smith down the street to paint that exact same project, it would look drastically different."

“I get a huge kick out of that artistically, and the older I get, the more fascinating it becomes to watch how people filter their observations and interpretations of the world into their art.

“I couldn’t even tell you exactly what it is that makes my work look different from other people’s, but the more I look back at it, the more I realize there’s a distinct look to it, in spite of myself.”

The value of a hand-painted sign

Montreal is no stranger to hand-painted signage, with notable artists like the famous letterer Claude Dolbec, who has worked primarily in the Plateau and Mile End for over 25 years. However, such artisans are few and far between.

Dave has observed a conflict between businesses willing to invest in preserving this art form and those opting for something digitized and cheaper.

“Anything handmade, whether it's carpentry, painting, or anything crafted by hand, will always be special. There is such a fascination with technology and computerized precision these days that people often perceive handmade work as janky,” Dave says.

“It’s like, yes, there’s no way you can paint a straight line, and some might assume that ordering a hand-painted sign means dealing with wiggles, bumps, and drips. But I've always worked very hard to make my signs as perfect as possible—not just to prove to myself that I can do it, but to show others that it’s possible.

“There are imperfections anytime you do anything, yes; humans, by definition, are imperfect. There will be bumps and wiggles, but that’s another thing I've always loved about the craft, the subtle charm of imperfection and how it adds character and humanity to the work, unlike a perfect sticker with consistent colour. Sure, there are no brush strokes, but it has absolutely no soul, no charm, no vibe.”

Despite these challenges, Dave believes there remains a rich history of hand-painted signage in Montreal. In older parts of town that haven’t yet been spruced up or gentrified, one can still find old, authentic examples of signage—a tradition that Dave and others are working to revive with their craft.

“There’s a newfound appreciation for it,” he says. “As the world becomes more computerized and mechanized, I think people are starting to miss the magic of the human touch on a core level—the magic of time, care, and dedication to a craft.”

In the beginning, there was always art

Originally from Oakville, Ontario, when Dave arrived in Montreal in 2004, art has always been a part of his life. He’s been a child actor, a display artist, and turned part of his apartment into a gallery called The Emporium for a time. He also created a pilot for a children’s show called The Dave Arnold Show. But painting has always been a constant for Dave.

“As a kid, there was a massive shift in my brain that occurred through comic books, primarily Mad Magazine and, to some degree, Archie comics. My brother, sister, and I read comic books quite a bit, and I remember being deeply fascinated with the artists back then,” he recalls.

“I’m not sure what sparked it, but I had a deep fascination with old advertising. I loved collecting old coffee cans and bottles. When I was 14, I was spending money from summer jobs on antique cans. Other kids were buying normal stuff like new toys or radio-controlled cars, but I’d be saving up to go shopping for antiques.

“That’s one of the reasons my workshop looks the way it does. I’ve got 30 years of collecting weird stuff that appeals to my eye. Looking back, I realize this fascination was lettering-based.

“There would be a style on a can, a bottle, or an ad where everything—the colour scheme, the lettering—was just beautiful, and that had a huge influence on where I landed in sign painting. For years, I was surrounding myself with these objects that appealed to me on a deep, core level, long before the idea of sign painting ever entered my mind.

“It’s made me realize that—whether by luck or fate—when people started asking for hand-painted signage, I was extremely well-versed in what they meant. Whether someone wanted a 1920s apothecary vibe or a 1970s disco look, I had unknowingly been filling my head with amateur research of all these different styles and looks, and much of it was really soaking into my subconscious.”

Looking back, looking ahead

“Looking at my craft now, after doing it professionally for 15 years, I realize the scope has widened around the idea that everything is an influence. I can watch a movie and apply its colour scheme to a project, or draw inspiration from textures and materials, for example,” he says.

“It’s no longer just about using one sign’s style to influence another. There’s always a little tidbit somewhere that’s actually the solution to my problem, and I’m finding it’s very beneficial—at least for my brain—to not limit myself but to widen my scope of influence. It helps put more fun into the process and expands what I can do.”

And when Dave Arnold is asked about his legacy to date?

“For years, I was just running blindly, trying to make some money with what I was able to do—finding a marketable skill and running with it. But now, I’m realizing that if I die tomorrow, my contribution to the arts, to Montreal, and to society would be a reminder of what humans are capable of.

“There’s this quote from some smart old guy I heard… he said that his fear was people are losing faith in human ability. We’re forgetting what we’re capable of as a species, and I like to think that the stuff I do—even though it’s a nightmare at times, even though it’s ludicrously time-consuming—I like reminding myself, the people who are watching, and my own kids of what’s possible.

“It’s applicable to anything: If you really put the time and practice into anything you focus on, you’ll find that the human body is a wildly advanced device. Aim it in any direction, stick with it, and you can uncover even forgotten skills.”

Check out The Main's collaborative tote created with Dave Arnold, aka Mr. Sign, on The Dépanneur.