A little over two years ago, Noni Stuart was on vacation to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe when she snapped a photo of an unhoused man and decided to draw his portrait from it. She hadn’t spoken with him or asked his name, but in studying his face she was deeply moved.
“I saw his pain. I saw his beauty. I saw his intelligence and just something really noble about him,” she said. “It really affected me so much that I thought, Wouldn’t it be amazing to continue to do this and share this with others?”
Since then, the Grand Isle artist has frequented “the Share,” the weekly dinners at Burlington’s First United Methodist Church — also known as the Red Door Church — and drawn portraits of many of the unhoused people she has met there. About 50 of those artworks will now be permanently on display at the church, alongside “The Seeker,” a 3-by-4-foot painting of her original muse transposed to the streets of Burlington, with the Red Door Church in the background. Stuart worked with street artist David DiPasquale of Chicopee, Mass., who designed the lion graffiti on a wall in the scene. To that, she added her own message: “Hope.”
‘The Seeker’ Unveiling and Celebration. Sunday, July 12, 3:30 p.m., at the First United Methodist Church in Burlington.
This article appears in The Cartoon Issue • 2026.
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