Tsekani artist Ron Solanas is the prototypical Aboriginal street artist, living from hand to mouth, often cold, wet, and hungry – using his artistic skills for day-to-day survival. In the Eastside of Vancouver he would drop by the small offices to sell a small drawing so he’d have money for a coffee or a meal. He would find a piece of poster paper, a shard of bark from a paper bark tree, some construction paper, or even a slice of wood veneer from some left-over renovation site. Each of these sources, and many more, were the base for his dramatic pen and pencil drawings. Ron is somewhere up north now, and Marylee hears about him via a service staff member in his Band. Sometimes others who run across Ron will report back on how he is doing. Recently Marylee was contacted by a woman who had collected Ron’s work many years ago and these “finds” were added to the collection for this gallery. This is a wonderful drawing of a bear catching a salmon under the watchful eye of the grandmother moon. It has the typical precise and forceful lines of a Ron Solanas creation. The images fit on a piece of heavy writing paper, with Ron having shaped the picture in the dimensions he wanted, leaving the lower inch of surface blank. This is a very appealing work, telling its own story, but also reflecting the story of a street-based, residential school survivor, who uses his considerable talent to make it through a troubled daily existence. V 11” x H 8”, pen and coloured pencil, 20 grams