Us Portrait Series
We spend our lives dividing the world into us and them, making judgments about who is right or wrong, worthy or unworthy. People like us, or people we’d rather not look at.
I think we’re missing something.
The people portrayed here are real. They are all my friends and include both people who came to the missions where I volunteered for support and those who volunteered alongside me.
Over many years, we shared experiences, stories and a lot of time together. This series began around 2018, while I was volunteering at a street mission called Urban Hope in Cambridge, Ontario.
Urban Hope is the focal point of the Cambridge Vineyard Christian Fellowship’s commitment to providing meaningful support to people experiencing homelessness, addiction, loneliness, financial hardship, or simply needing friendship. Anyone who shows up is cared for. Urban Hope’s motto is, “Come as you are. You will be loved.”
Urban Hope provides a judgment-free environment where people can receive a free meal, clothing, groceries, a shower, coffee, prayer and many other forms of no-strings-attached care and ministry. During my time there, I learned that the most important things offered were neither food nor clothing, but friendship and a safe, judgment-free place where people could relax, talk and simply be themselves.
I tried to model my service after Jesus. He loved and served people where they were, meeting them with compassion rather than judgment. He walked alongside them toward healing and transformation, but only when they were ready. An invitation built on friendship and trust. (NOTE: We all know that religion can be very judgmental, but Jesus is actually radically Inclusive, not just tolerant. )
For several years I volunteered at Urban Hope for one day a month, then, from 2018 to 2025, my commitment grew to three days a week. I did a little of everything, including facilitating an addiction recovery group. (Also – every Monday, for about seven years, I also took part in a weekly ministry where we met with people on the street, handed out sandwiches and hot drinks.)
Urban Hope transformed me. When I first started, I was shy around many of the rougher guests and, to be honest, a little frightened of some of them. By the time I left, many of us had become friends.
I began taking photographic portraits of both guests and fellow volunteers as a way of celebrating who we are and what we were doing together. Today, I am revisiting those photographs and creating vibrant pastel portraits of my friends from Urban Hope, along with other people I have known throughout my life.
The central idea behind this series is simple: there is no us and them, there is only us. The moment we begin seeing people as something other than “us,” we begin to isolate ourselves from one another.
My goal is to create portraits, in both pastel and photography, of anyone and everyone in a respectful and celebratory way. We are all simply people, and I want to see us all as unique, interesting and beautiful. Some of my subjects are people struggling with addiction; others are business people and just regular folks. I want to portray every person with the same respect and dignity.
While my photography is precise and razor-sharp, my drawings are Fauvist, abstract and expressionistic. They are not illustrations; they are emotional expressions—attempts to depict something I simply don’t have the words for.
My art can be chaotic, intense and sometimes surprising even to me. Drawing is a spiritual experience for me, a moment when I’m less concerned with controlling the image than with letting something come through. Perhaps that’s why these portraits look the way they do. They’re not about making people look pretty or comfortable. They’re about being alive. At least that’s what I’m trying to capture.
My belief is simple: there is something sacred in every person. Some might call it the soul, God’s Kingdom, or simply our shared humanity. Whatever name we give it, I believe we’re better off when we learn to recognize it in one another.
I don’t draw because I want to.
I draw because I have to.
I didn’t choose this style.
It’s simply what happens.
Original art and archival prints available for sale, 50% of net profits are donated to Urban Hope. Contact me (click here) for more info.