Anonymous Influences

I wrote this blog years ago 

and am posting it for the first time in 2021.

I hope you enjoy one artist's now historic slice of Montreal life.

Anonymous Influences

Graffiti - Stencils - Street Art

Let me get one thing straight right off. 
I'm not talking about thoughtless angry meaningless scrawl 
across your local bus stop or mail box.  
I get as annoyed about that as the next person.  

When I'm working in my Montreal studio, twice a day (in between focused painting sessions with refined gouache on Italian paper!) I pound the pavement...long walks through the quartier, camera in hand, down the ruelles, the laneways of hidden gardens, garages, back balconies between each street.  That's where the anonymous art is and I have developed an addiction to collecting it.

There are currently close to 400 photographs 

that I have taken between 2007 and 2011
within an area of approximately 10 city blocks 

east of Rue St-Denis to Rue de Lorimier 
and from rue Ste-Catherine Est north to Boulevard St-Joseph.

I'm not academic about it.  I follow my nose and I've learned to read the traces at the corners and know if some daring artist/criminal has risked exposure by going further down the lane away from the quick escape route of two streets.  I've learned to recognize certain signatures and likely target spots.  I've seen beautiful murals covered over. I've seen tag over tag over tag.  I've seen the frustration of garage owners as their garage doors, a favorite target - that beautiful big framed surface, are sprayed again and again.  

I have been delighted and amazed by the talent 
and sometimes dismayed and outraged by the defacement.  

Mostly I document without comment, 

without geographical notation, without judgement. 

Once I stumbled across a ruelle free from graffiti, yet decorated by its' inhabitants, called rue "Modigliani", where original paintings hang on the walls of the outdoor sheds and the children have claimed the garden fences and garage doors for their own artwork.  

The artwork in this lane is respected, 

there are hardly any tags, no stencils over...  Hmmm.

There are trails to seek out and follow - of stencils repeated in one location after another...

Pourquoi tuer? (Why kill?) 

Sortez d'Irak (get out of Irak), 

Art is Over Here, Montréal

Perhaps not unexpectedly, the gesture of graffiti seems to have crept into my own artwork as a result.  The arcing spray line from a can of paint translates into sweeping brush strokes and freer gestures than I was capable of or ever envisioned before.  The rich fearless colours, the layering and detachment from earlier ideas, covered up without regret, even with a certain reckless abandonment...these elements encountered in the urban laneways have been exciting additions to the way I approach the art I make.

Allyna Harris Untitled 2010 gouache on Arches (sold)

Allyna Harris Untitled 2010 gouache on Arches

I walk the underbelly of the city and it takes me 

to another place in my artmaking. Techniques are subliminally absorbed from the street and free up my own. 
The experiments, the creativity, the visions, the surprises, the defiance of it all gets tamed down on paper and canvas to a more contained self expression.  The freedom of expression found in those empty back alleys is a continual inspiration to me. 

 I cruise the development of the street art genre that pulls together pop culture,  the faded layers of stucco and brick and gyprock and cement, the 'seize the moment' attitude that defiantly decorates a broken doorway, a barred window, 

an old telephone pole, a garbage bin.   
I keep on documenting anonymous street art 
even as the debate rages about it's presence and illegality.

wooden door, detail, Montreal

I am unapologetically grateful to these other artists who 

are so driven by their vision that they risk arrest to express it. 

Montreal wall

To me these are treasures of visions otherwise unseen, voices otherwise unheard. 

They are the gestures of free spirits among us, anonymous outsiders making themselves visible, making art that could be gone again in days or even hours, art that might be painted over that ubiquitous garage door grey before anyone even has a chance to see it.  To me this ephemera of human traces and political statements is more positive than negative, more affirmative than angry, more evidence of life and passion 

than the dry coldness of unmarked crumbling infrastructures.

Art made by people without studios or expensive paints, 

papers, canvas, galleries, press, etc.

What is destroyed in order to create?

What is created only to be destroyed?

Montreal lion wall

All photographs property of Allyna Harris.

Please do not use without permission.
To see more of my artwork visit www.allynaharris.com