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He has composed greater than 100 portraits of the ones staying on the Union Gospel Undertaking safe haven, the place he has been residing for a 12 months
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As rows of homeless Vancouver citizens sit down dealing with the tv at a Downtown Eastside non-profit safe haven every morning, An Dong faces the alternative means.
With a sketchbook resting on his leg and a pencil in hand, the 59-year-old focuses carefully at the folk — all males — seated in entrance of him.
“Capturing their character and emotions is much more important than getting the lines of their face accurate,” Dong informed Postmedia Information.
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For the endmost 12 months, he has been snoozing on the Union Gospel Undertaking males’s safe haven. All through that day he has composed greater than 100 portraits of people individuals who’ve come via its doorways.
Next finishing every 40-minute cartoon, Dong asks every of the lads about their lives.
“Steven, he was here for 30 days. Both his wife and daughter died from an overdose in a period of a few months — he was heartbroken,” stated Dong, pointing to a tiny canvas that held the picture of a grey-haired guy dressed in a blue L.A. Dodgers cap.
“This is Adam. He is 38, from Victoria, and was in college for three years before he got an addiction,” Dong recalled. “This is Randy, he was 66 years old and has to walk with a cane because he fell and broke his hip.”
The artist says his function with the portrait sequence has been to retain a file of the entire males who’ve struggled at the outskirts of folk.
Sarah Bite, of the Union Gospel Undertaking, says there isn’t plenty housing for all of Vancouver’s homeless folk.
“Working in the DTES we see how there is a demand for housing, and how there is not enough to meet the demand — but when it comes to skill and talent, there is no shortage of that here.”
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A homeless depend exempted endmost fall reported 4,821 folk in Metro Vancouver with out a house as of March 2023. Part have been in Vancouver.
Bite stated that Dong is the use of his inventive ability to aid deprived folk who’ve been lost sight of.
“It’s people we sometimes don’t even look in the eye when we walk past them on the street, he takes 40 minutes out of each day to explore who they are with curiosity and compassion.”
Dong is these days on UGM’s lengthy wait-list of folk who’ve carried out to reside within the non-profit’s transitional housing, which is obtainable at below-market charges.
He continues to have a accumulation in usual with the lads he attracts and paints.
Ahead of emigrating from China in 2006 at future 42, Dong was once hired as an inner dressmaker. However since coming to Canada, he has struggled to seek out solid paintings and housing. He these days lives out of a steel cart that accommodates a couple of assets, together with his sketchbook and a purple downpour jacket.
Dong informed Postmedia that his portrait venture has taught him to appear while his suppositions about unhoused folk.
“When I met Canadians who lived in the shelter and were homeless, I didn’t understand why. I figured that if I had been born here like them, I would have achieved more success in my life.”
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Era quickly taught him that there have been extra causes than he concept as to why folk fall into homelessness.
Since he was once a kid, Dong has had a dream of finishing a nice arts schooling and changing into a qualified artist.
However with each pristine 12 months that has handed with him shifting from town to town — whether or not for brief labour jobs or distant language categories to higher perceive the English-speaking global round him — he has grown wearier.
“I don’t feel I have much time left anymore. I feel tired with nowhere to rest,” Dong stated.
Each evening the self-taught artist traces up out of doors the first-come, first-serve DTES males’s safe haven to book a mattress to relief in from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. the nearest morning.
All through the date, he walks to Coast Psychological Fitness Centre and works on finishing painted works the use of the Vancouver non-profit’s distant studio length and fabrics.
Holding his completed art work intact has additionally confirmed a problem for Dong.
Dong has resorted to tucking canvasses in nooks between constructions or in timber at native soils through the years.
“Some are damaged by the rain and one I found a man at a flea market selling,” Dong stated. “When I tried to sign it for him, he didn’t believe that it was I who painted it.”
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One of the vital males he has captured on paper or canvas have died from disorder or exuberance since. Others have turn into his akin pals.
“Adam, he always calls me bro, but I told him that he has to start calling me uncle because of my age,” he stated.
“Everyone has a story, and many of them still have hope that one day they will find the necessary help to be able to turn their life around.”
sgrochowski@postmedia.com
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