Daniel Coulson started drawing on cardboard boxes after he left The Alfred hospital’s mental health ward.
Years later, he still uses a box canvas, and a dozen of his charcoal portraits sit silently at the Queen Victoria Market while shoppers bustle past. “They all have their stories. They all have these struggles that they deal with,” Coulson says. “Putting them on a cardboard box, and then outside to be weathered and destroyed, [only to] hold up really well, shows their strength and resilience.”Luis Enrique Ascui
“Negative [reactions] stand out to me more. The kicking of boxes ... they like to kick the faces,” Coulson says.“I mean, kids do it, and that doesn’t hurt as much, but when the adults do it ... I guess people don’t understand why it’s there. And that sort of hurts a little bit.”