Faces of Santa Ana: Brian Peterson's Portraits of Homeless Neighbors

Brian Peterson’s Faces of Santa Ana: Portraits That Pay Their Subjects

Brian Peterson painting Matthew, one of the first subjects of Faces of Santa Ana.

Faces of Santa Ana is an ongoing portrait project by California artist Brian Peterson. He sits down with people experiencing homelessness in Santa Ana, the county seat of Orange County, listens to their stories and paints them. Each subject signs the corner of their own canvas, and when the painting sells, the money goes to that person to help them get back on their feet. It is a simple idea with a quietly radical premise: the people in the portraits are not the topic of the art, they are its co-owners.

The project drew wide attention in 2015, when outlets including Metro in the UK and the activism site True Activist shared it. What follows is how it started, who some of the first subjects were, and why projects like this matter beyond a feel-good headline.

How Faces of Santa Ana began

Peterson has described himself as a man of faith, and the spark for the project came from a book: Love Does by lawyer and author Bob Goff, published in 2012 and a New York Times bestseller. Goff's message is that love is something you do rather than something you feel. Peterson summed it up for Metro in three words: "Love takes action."

He had not painted for about seven years when he decided to put that idea into practice. Instead of donating money from a distance, he chose to give time, attention and the one skill he had set aside. Conversations came first; the brushwork followed.

Matthew: learning a person through their face

Matthew was among the first people Peterson painted. Here he crouches on the pavement to add his signature to a portrait in which his eyes carry visible worry. On the project's Instagram account, Peterson reflected that studying a face after a conversation keeps revealing things the words did not, and that it sends him back with new questions the next time they meet.

He also admitted that many of the men he paints are slow to open up and share only fragments of their past. Those fragments, carefully held, become the raw material of each portrait.

Shannon: the first signature

Shannon was the first subject to sign his canvas, seen here bending over a café table to do it. Peterson wrote that the man's gratitude humbled him as an artist. Shannon went on to champion the project himself, stopping by when the work was displayed to talk with passers-by about his life, turning a painting into a conversation between neighbours who might otherwise never speak.

Darryl: an inventor at the bus stop

Darryl (spelled "Daryl" in some captions) holds up his finished portrait, painted in warm yellows and reds with his trademark cycling helmet. Peterson described him as someone who sees value where others see rubbish, and who builds objects out of what the city throws away.

Darryl likes to collect junk and turn it into useful objects

His walker, fitted with roller-blade wheels for smoother movement, became a familiar sight at a downtown Santa Ana bus stop, and people reportedly photographed it regularly. Next to it stands his "satellite," an old hubcap mounted on a camera tripod with the legs adjusted so the dish points at the sky. Darryl told Peterson he hoped to patent the walker idea one day, and joked about the dish: "I don't have cable yet, but I have a satellite!"

Asked about life on the streets, he insisted his circumstances did not define his mind: "I'm above where I'm at." Peterson came away convinced that what Darryl wanted most was conversation, laughter and curiosity from strangers.

The exhibition and what it stands for

When the portraits are shown together on an easel under the Faces of Santa Ana banner, the effect is striking: three large, expressive faces of Matthew, Shannon and Darryl, each looking straight back at the viewer. A plaque beneath them carries a line often attributed to Aristotle, to the effect that art should show the inner meaning of things rather than their surface.

That idea is the heart of the project. Homelessness tends to make people invisible; passers-by look away, and news coverage often reduces them to statistics. A large painted face, signed by its subject, asks the viewer to see an individual with a name, a sense of humour and a history.

Why dignity-first projects matter, and how to help

Portraits do not end homelessness on their own, and Peterson never claimed they would. The money from a sale can help with practical needs, but the deeper value lies in relationship: repeated visits, remembered names and the experience of being taken seriously. People who work with unhoused communities often say that isolation is one of the hardest parts of life on the street, and that being treated as a person rather than a problem can make it easier to accept other help.

If the story moves you, a few concrete steps go further than sharing a post:

Learn the names of people you regularly pass and greet them; small acknowledgements matter.
Support local shelters, outreach teams and housing programmes, which can turn goodwill into stable accommodation.
Follow and support artists who share proceeds with their subjects, and ask how the money reaches them.
If you have a creative skill, consider how it could amplify voices that rarely get heard.

You can follow the project on its Instagram and Facebook pages.

Sources: Photos and quotes by Brian Peterson, Faces of Santa Ana on Instagram and Facebook; Sophie McAdam, True Activist (2 September 2015), via The Mind Unleashed; Bob Goff (Wikipedia).

Related: