The Collection of TransCanada PipeLines Limited, Calgary
Phillip Surrey was a figurative painter with an enduring interest in human subjects within urban nightscapes. He occupied a unique place within twentieth-century Canadian art history, which was dominated largely by landscape painting in the 1930s and 1940s and abstraction in the 1950s and 60s. For most of his career, Surrey used Montreal as his stage, arranging settings of pedestrians wandering the usually empty streets. In “Le Maxicoat,” Surrey creates an imagined and cinematic nocturnal scene, emphasized by the black and white palette, of three solitaire figures walking independently of one another. In the background, behind three passing cars and a line of street lamps, is a mysterious barren landscape, creating a stark contrast to the urban scene that appears to end most abruptly.
