The oil painting on wood panel, shown with the photograph that inspired it below), was one of two 16 by 16 inch paintings among the five I presented at the invitational two-day event in late August, organized by the Friends of Mount Royal Cemetery. I titled it Life in the Cemetery, and later renamed it Life Among the Dead.

It turns out that the event in August 2019 was my first and last participation. The cemetery cancelled the annual event following the retirement of the employee who organized it with the Friends.

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At least one of the paintings on display had to be inspired by a scene inside the cemetery on "the Mountain," Montreal's iconic hill that also has room for the upper residential sections of Westmount and Outremont, a large park designed by Frederick Olmstead, Mount Royal Cemetery is one of three on the mountain, the other cemeteries being Catholic and Jewish.

Atop the mountain, which is an extinct volcano, is the Mount Royal Cross, whose top sets the limit of how high downtown skyscrapers can be built.