Labrona: the story of the faces that ride the rails
Somewhere in North America right now, a freight train is rolling with a Labrona face painted on its flank — a melancholic, brightly-coloured character heading to a city that will never know who sent it. This is the story of one of Montréal's most quietly poetic street artists, and one of the artists represented by L'Original.
An education in the train yards
Born in Magog in 1972, Labrona moved to Montréal in 1997 to study art at Concordia. But his real schooling happened after class, in the train yards and back streets, alongside his mentor and lifelong collaborator Other (Troy Lovegates). There he learned a lesson galleries can't teach: that a painting can leave home and travel the continent on its own.
Old masters, reborn in crayon
His signature multi-coloured faces — and his reworkings of the 'old masters' — borrow from German Expressionism, Mexican muralism and religious icons, then strip them down to something tender and human. Painted in oil crayon on rusting steel, they turn freight cars into a roaming, accidental museum that carries Montréal's street art far past the city limits.
Coming home, to the gallery
The world noticed. Labrona painted murals with Montréal's MU, showed in Los Angeles, Paris, New York and London, and joined festivals from MURAL to Living Walls. But the trains keep rolling — and now the same hand makes original studio works you can finally keep. At L'Original, you can give one of those wandering faces a home.
