Artworks

Bus Stop (1982) is a fine work by Philip Surrey, one of Canada’s most perceptive chroniclers of urban life. His is the theatre of everyday life. The scene captures a surreal stillness of everyday life on a winter morning along a residential street. That is Montreal, recognizable by the design of the bus sign, is unimportant to the quiet psychological narrative of city life. A young woman waits at the bus stop beneath a sign marked “19 — 82,” Surrey’s indication of the year of the painting. Elsewhere there are a few pedestrians, each walking alone. The bare winter trees recede into the distance.The traffic light, the winter coats, the taxi serve to guide the eye. Is that a cameo appearance of the artist standing toward the centre of his composition?

By 1982 Philip Surrey had risen to a painterly maturity and was among the foremost modern figurative artists in Canada. The significance of his contribution can be best appreciated in the context of Alec Colville and Jean-Paul Lemieux. As with Colville and Lemieux there is a cinematic stillness, figures often self contained and a psychological undertone to the narrative.