This is a thing I've been working on since last year.

The first time I made this image it was on the wooden palette that a block of frozen fish had been packaged with.

Eventually it became a pen and ink drawing.

Then a hoodie.

And then a t-shirt. Both the hoodie and the t-shirt were unwelcome windows on to the limitations of contemporary print-on-demand textile services.

No one ever knows what the bear is holding. Most people think it's a skateboard. It is the island of Montréal. Obviously.

Finally I had a very large version printed on canvas and made it in to a noren. It stayed that way for a few months until I painted the background gold and then it remained that way, again, for another few months.

Gradually, I started to apply bits of chiyogami to it.

At first, it was just to suggest some landscape in the background but pretty quickly I decided to do the whole thing.

I am waiting to see how well (or poorly) the materials fare as the seasons change.

I have had to take it down a few times, already, to glue fraying edges back in to place and that's just from the wind and daily use, never mind the rain.

I don't look forward to doing that work but I do find myself enjoying it.

If you've never heard Bran Van 3000's Montreal it's a good song. So are Arianne Moffat's song by the same name and dubmatique's Un été à Montréal.

There are a lot of good songs about Montréal.

I wasn't sure about the nose. I love the nose.

Noren 415 / 514 (2024). 48 x 60.5 inches. Digital print, acrylic and chiyogami on canvas.