Creative Writing in the Gallery: Lost in Marian Dale Scott’s Concrete Jungle

By Hugo Barsacq-Camard, McGill Visual Arts Collection Student Assistant, 2022-2025

Montreal artist Marian Dale Scott (1906-1993) was a pioneer of Canadian modern art, changing and adapting her art style and techniques across a seventy-year career.

In 1934, having recently started her artistic career, Marian Dale Scott sought to reinvent herself and her artwork. In her personal life she adopted a left leaning political and social stance against the rise of fascism. She was also inspired by Soviet-era art of the time, and the socialist movements that ensued. Some of these themes can be seen in several groupings of artworks she gave the general title of This Certain Age. Within these groups we find series of paintings titled, Grain Elevator, Gas Tanks, Escalators, and Cement. This artwork in the McGill Visual Arts Collection, Cement no 1 (Fig. 1), was part of the Cement series. With a palette of greens, greys and browns, the sharp geometric layout of the city gives off an ominous almost empty atmosphere to the artwork. In fact, rather than glorifying this new age, Marian Dale Scott treated it with a level of criticism and irony. She would later add human figures within these urban landscapes and become increasingly more abstract, a style that continued into her later years.

The following piece was written as a creative writing exercise intended to use the artwork as a writing prompt. No prior knowledge on the artwork nor the artist was used, and instead the atmosphere that the artwork inspired speaks to the artist herself and the ability to convey emotion from one artistic medium into another.

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Lost in Marian Dale Scott’s Concrete Jungle by Hugo Barsacq-Camard

Another wall.

I ran down the street, legs flailing as if unencumbered by gravity. I turned right, then left, then another right through the alley between 4^th and 5^th street. I thought I had outrun it, found a way out, but before long I was faced with another wall. It was nearly dusk, and the evening sun barely made a dent in the opaque maze of cement that criss-crossed across the sky. Elevators, highways, conveyer belts and sidewalks. Still panting I sat down against the cold surface of the adjoining wall. My head rolling back, I waited, ready to be swallowed up with the rest of the city. I must have waited an hour in a waking sleep until I realized the alteration wasn’t coming. I had escaped for now.

In the dream, a city ate the world

Every day the whole city rearranges itself. Buildings shift back into the ground, as sidewalks and stairs collapse into each other in a domino-like rotation. Anyone caught by the alteration disappears. Anyone. I haven’t seen people in days. Last week a woman waved at me in the metro station. The metro car runs across the city’s center rising up into the sky. It is a constant in every iteration. Sometimes it is underground, other time inverted. You may find it packed one day or completely empty the next. The woman waved from across the train platform and then she was gone. Maybe she never stopped waving. I don’t know what happens when someone gets caught. In all likelihood they are dead, though I think they just get rearranged too; fall through the world into another city, another Cement. I don’t know which is worse.

Night set the city aglow with buildings lights. I limped out of the alley into a completely different world then the one I had woken up to. Strange new skyscrapers had grown in neat geometric patterns all along the street, while even taller buildings seemed to lean on their side. Standing at the angle of the street was a storefront. A large poster of a tree was stuck to its side.

In the dream trees sway in the absence of wind.

 A couple of people were in the store, shopping as if nothing had happened neither looking nor talking to one another. A few kids seemed to get along quite well in the corner. Concealed behind everybody’s nonchalance were eyes shifting back and forth, searching for any movement in the walls. I grabbed what I could and made my way to the self-checkout. My bank account stood at $2,052,465.86. Another victim of the alteration. I made myself a mental note to buy as many things as I could before the next alteration. I passed the tree poster on the way out, taking in the sight and went on my way to find an empty apartment to sleep and cook for the night.

In the dream I swim
I swim effortlessly to forget I am drowning
In the dream stars paint the night sky ablaze, cement
Shifting solidifies 
and we are trapped

I woke up drenched in sweat and ready to sprint out at a moment’s notice.

Silence.

Dreaming in the city is always an uncomfortable experience. There’s always the sense that you’re not alone, that the dream is not your own. Maybe the city dreams it too.  

***

I stood atop the tallest office building I had managed to find. A few people stood around me taking in the view from the roof. I’d stocked up on supplies and had taken the metro car through the city center. All around us was more and more cement. You could see miles of blues and greys and mauves, all forming a tapestry of glass and concrete. No hope of escape, just more cement. Someone must have jumped off the railing because the others gasped and shuffled along. I wasn’t paying them attention. Off in the distance something caught my eye. There was a single minor road that curved and curved until it reached… green? It may have been a trick of the eyes, or little more than a dead bush, but no, I was certain now. It was a tree, and beyond that, there was nothing. No grey, no buildings, just the tiniest glimmer of freedom. I leapt away from the railing, half afraid the tree would vanish before I’d yet started my journey. I had to reach it, I had to escape. 

In the dream, a city ate the World

They named it Cement

***

The sun had made its way past the grey skies and beat down on the city, making every smooth corner and wall smoldering. It had been almost three days of walking, but I had nearly mapped out what I thought was uncharted territory. Every new road and stairwell would have dampened my hopes were it not for the fact that they provided a possibility. The smallest possibility of finding an exit. Escape. Water would become an issue soon, and I hadn’t found a storefront since yesterday morning. The current path took me down a smooth concrete slide, which swerved down to the lower sections. I could tell the city was pushing me away.

Long sharp lines drew themselves across the horizon and it occurred to me that I could no longer feel the sun on my back. No rain was coming either. High above me the sky seemed to slant sideways, forcing the high-rises to collapse with it. Crrrr-aaaack! I ran. I ran as more and more of the sky became covered in jagged movements of buildings and roads. I ran as the ground below my feet danced ecstatically. Then I saw it, the curving road. The path outside. I followed the broad strokes that had left their mark on my memory and kept at it. I ran through an office window now transforming into an alleyway. Fifty centimetres between coarse rock rasping at my knees. I could smell and hear it now. The faint breeze, the smell of something wet, something a child would know as grass. All around me the sky was falling. But I didn’t care. The city could push and push and push, but I had pushed out. I sprinted around the final corner, and there standing far too tall,

Another wall.