Peter Dore knows that of which he paints.

Dore was recently commissioned by the People Place to paint a mural on a brick wall at the head of Linear Park near the Upper Room Mission.

He chose a jungle scape for the brick wall that was covered with graffiti to represent life on the streets, something he knows a lot about.

For two years, Dore camped where he could in Vernon, and while he is now living in a van, he is technically still homeless.

Members of the homeless community are some of his best friends and he has seen the hardship and trauma that comes with living rough and he wanted the mural to represent the challenges the homeless face on a daily basis.

So, Dore painted a jungle scene on the wall because as he puts it, “It really is a jungle out there.”
Different scenes mean different things but they all have a common theme of survival.

“I lived a lot of experiences with them. A lot of death, a lot of overdoses and all kinds of evictions and crazy stuff that happens everyday in their lives,” said Dore. “This is basically the worst part of town where everybody crashes out. It's a jungle out here and I thought of making a poetic representation of the area.”

Instead of drawing homeless people, Dore said he drew animals to represent life on the streets and those who are struggling to get by.

“It kind of represents what's happening to the people around here,” he said.

Dore also draws downtown scenes bustling with actual people he knows or has seen in the city.

“I'm on a mission basically to draw the whole town,” said Dore of his intricate hand-drawn artworks that he is also selling.