October 10th marks World Homeless Day. Here in New York, I wanted to do my part in honoring the homeless as individuals rather than a statistic. My project is entitled “I See You” and started over a year ago. It was prompted by a street encounter with a homeless man holding up a sign saying, “I might as well be invisible.”
My family and I stopped in our tracks, and my husband actually gave this stranger a big hug and said, “I see you man.” It was in that very moment than an idea was born: to paint a whole series of canvases giving visibility to the homeless, making the viewer see them as any human being deserves. I treated my street models as I would a regular artist model, and when possible, asked for their permission and compensated them for posing, or in other cases, simply slipped some money beneath their belongings.
On my daily journey to my studio, Artishouse, a beautiful community where artists share a space without separating walls, I continue to find my models. One day, I saw a young woman right outside my studio with a broken leg, holding a particularly heart-wrenching sign: “Losing all hope.”
Beyond her sign, she had a name, Rachel, and a beautiful personality, and we became friends over the course of a few months. Rachel taught me that the act of simply slowing down and asking if a person needs anything can save somebody’s life. An example would be getting a blanket or umbrella, instead of just leaving a couple of dollars without pausing to ask what could really help someone out. When I asked Rachel to pose for a painting, her face lit up, and she shared that she dreamt to be an artist–I made sure to get her some art supplies so she could draw the street from her vantage point. Every day, she asked me how my painting was going, and let me know that she wanted to be surprised. By miraculous coincidence, on the evening of my exhibition opening last April, Rachel was finally able to obtain housing in New Jersey. She did not get to see her portrait, but every time I pass her now-empty “corner,” my heart glows with joy.
The paintings themselves are created with a mixture of oil and empathy on canvas. Often, the subjects are portrayed as larger than life, engaging the viewer and nearly sculpted with a special engraving tool. This produces a much more tangible, three-dimensional effect, rendering them genuinely “felt” and real. I’ve been really transformed by this experience and hope that, together with a responsive audience, we can make a true impact, one person at a time. In my opinion, the one thing that should never be taken away from any human being is their right to hope. My biggest dream is that a subject from my painting would accidentally pick up a newspaper and see their portrait highlighted in an article like this, honoring them and telling their story.