Realistic drawings Series 1 & 2
In my Homeless drawings (series 1) and Homeless drawings (series 2) I explore the issue of homelessness and poverty in the urban environment in the 21st century. In my first series I focus on the idea of the "street person," though visibly present, being perceived as absent, unimportant, or non-existent in society. For example, in "Homeless #1" and "Homeless #2," I used realistic techniques with pencil showing two images of the same person – one drawn with a lot of detail and the other erased.
In my second series, I draw people who live at a street-level subsistence as a way to connect viewers to problems related to poverty and homelessness in Montreal. I always ask people for their consent before I draw them and in the process we talk. I try to add something from our conversation into the drawing. For example, in "Charlie Brown, Missy, and Bandit," I did the entire drawing in pencil except for the 3 dogs, which I used brown conté and black charcoal to draw more attention to them. I did this because Joe (sitting to the left of his dogs) and Dennis (sitting to the right) talked a lot about their dogs to me, it was almost as if they were extensions of them. However, they also spoke about some of the harsher realities of their lives, which I mention in the caption below the drawing. I am currently working on the series, which will include a diverse range of people.