Meet the man behind some of Montreal's most iconic business signs

You might not realize it, but you are probably familiar with Dave Arnold's work. 

The local artist is responsible for the hand-painted signs on some of Montreal's most iconic restaurants.

"So, if you're a customer coming in the back door, that's where you'd go in," Arnold said while giving CTV News a tour of the Joe Beef terrace.

Above the back entrance hangs one of the first signs ever painted.

"But this little one," he said, pointing to a small sign hanging over the staff entrance to the kitchen, "just the 'cuisine,' for some reason I really love that one. It feels like a nice old French restaurant."

Dave Arnold. (Scott Prouse/CTV News)

Mr. Sign, as he has become known, has been adding a bit of his own personal flavour to bars and restaurants all over the city for more than 15 years.

"The subtle charm of imperfection is a thing that we're constantly going for," he said of the lettering he did on the front window of Vin Papillon on Notre-Dame Street. "It's a fine line between looking too much but, a little a little wiggle, a little blip here and there really adds to the charm."

As he finished the thought, Arnold noticed a sliver of paint missing at the bottom-right corner of the letter N.

The sign at Montreal's Le Vin Papillon, rated one of Canada's top 100 restaurants earlier this year, is also one of Dave Arnold's works. (Scott Prouse/CTV News)

"Someone got curious here," he said. "You can see someone said: is that really paint? And their fingernail seems to have discovered it is. It is paint for sure. I'll be back here next week to touch that up."

Painting restaurant windows in Little Burgundy is how Arnold started, but his work is now ubiquitous.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Dave Arnold // Mr. Sign (@arniewolfman)

In the Mile End, he showed CTV News his methods. Boucherie Lawrence's glass door was smashed recently, destroying one of his paintings. Last week, Arnold was back to repaint.

"A blank canvas is the most important step," he joked while thoroughly wiping down the glass door with Windex.

Then, with chalk stencil lines on the window as his guide, Arnold's carefree humour gives way to laser focus. Each detail is given careful consideration.

Dave Arnold paints a sign on Montreal storefront. (Scott Prouse/CTV News)

"There's a lot of things to consider," he said. "The design is one, the colour is another. The texture that you want. Inside of the glass versus outside of the glass."

"There's all these considerations that, you know, if you do them all properly, it ends up looking quite nice. If you make the wrong call on any one of them, you can end up looking like a dog's breakfast."

At this point, Arnold has lost count of the number of restaurant and shop windows he's painted but believes the number is close to 70. Each design is unique. But taken together, they create a common thread, melding art and food in a way that is authentically Montreal.

"It's really satisfying to know that I have left little breadcrumbs of me and my tastes and my talents all over the city," he said. "It's very, very satisfying."