PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A MEAN-STREETS DRUG ADDICT

On a mild evening in early September, Ken Foster, his black
sweatshirt's hood framing a gaunt face partly concealed behind a
scraggly beard, hovers on the periphery of the Cambie pub's patio
clutching a medium-sized painting.

The piece -- measuring about 36 inches by 36 inches -- is a mix of
spray-paint and charcoal pencil, the scrawny artist explains to a
backpacker at the patio's fence. It's a combination he clearly employs
regularly, evidenced by black-stained hands and a generous-palette's
worth of overspray splattered on his baggy brown cords.

Many of the pub's patrons, some conversing in foreign tongues, ignore
him. Others offer a glance and a disinterested shake of the head. None
of the body language gets lost in translation.

Upon closer inspection, however, the piece -- a dark, desolate view of
an alley -- is skilled and intricate. On the bottom of it, scrawled in
charcoal: "K. Foster."

Drug addicted ... schizophrenic ... artist. Besides draught beer, to
most folks sitting on the patio, that might as well be the order on
this night. To the casual observer, Foster's just a homeless dude
trying to hock a painting for cash.

"I'd be happy with 50 bucks," he says to another about a piece that he
claims took three hours to finish. "But I could go lower ..."

On the street, things can always go lower. There are others on scene
- -- a doorman, a banjo-playing hipster-type and a talented freestyle
rapper -- who approach Foster, say hello, admire the work. In those
circles, he's a legend, renowned for his talent and prolific output:
The 39-year-old Foster paints up to eight pieces a day and has been
selling it on these streets for nearly 20 years. On this night,
though, Foster lopes away, the painting still hanging from his hands.
Foster is a hustler: artist, agent and salesman rolled into one.
Publicity doesn't pay the bills; paintings do.

His canvas? Anything he can get his hands on: Styrofoam, discarded
wood and plastic pillaged from furniture store dumpsters, dirty
alleys, rundown streets. Geographically, it's not far from the Emily
Carr University of Art and Design on Granville Island to the Roosevelt
Hotel, one door west of the Carnegie Community Centre at the corner of
Hastings and Main. Foster, who grew up in North Delta, attended the
school for almost a year, mostly to socialize.

"Looking back, I probably could have got more out of it," he
says.

"You looking for rock, buddy?" It's the last question posed to me on
the rainy street before getting buzzed through two locked doors into
the hotel. Visitors must sign in so the night manager escorts me up to
his second-floor office, where he takes my licence and records its
particulars. A computer monitor displays black-and-white images of the
street below and, on the counter, within easy reach of the doorway,
two open boxes of unused hypodermic needles.

"I'd be wary of going in Ken's room," the manager says. "Bugs ... But
don't tell him I said that."

No matter. Foster offers the same warning as he points to his room's
paint and charcoal-stained door. "You can go inside if you want,
though," he adds. Getting inside is the problem. The stench of urine
mauls the nostrils as the door opens to a shin-deep sea of scrap:
disused painting supplies, cardboard boxes, discarded paintings,
signs, clothing, stained pillows and garbage make navigating the tiny
room perilous. A cockroach rambles across the wall.

Outside in the hallway, Foster sits on the stairs eating mashed
potatoes out of a Styrofoam bowl. He doesn't know how to use a
computer and seems surprised to hear that he has almost 500 fans on a
Facebook page dedicated to his work. "I don't even know what that
means," he says, between bites.

One of his admirers, music producer Brian (Stroker) Deluca, met Foster
on the street while running a studio in Gastown and owns 17 of his
pieces.

"Very creative, insightful," DeLuca says of Foster's
work.

"Every piece tells a different story ... Every time I buy one I wonder
if it's the last time I'm going to see the guy."

"I don't realize that when I'm painting them," Foster says about his
darker work. "But when I look at them later, I see things that make me
realize I wasn't in a good place."

Foster describes his style as hip hop tossed into a dumpster with the
good parts blown out the back of it. "Graffiti mixed with [H. R.]
Giger and elements of [M. C.] Escher," he adds casually.

Foster's friend, Matt, boasts that he can make $200 a day selling art.
"I don't know any artists who make that," he says. Looking at Foster's
frail frame and squalid surroundings, it's obvious where most of that
money goes.

"Drugs have been a companion the whole time I've been on the street,"
he explains. A commission is agreed, the sole stipulation being that
it be something on the street.

Two days later, Foster -- who's hacked at his beard and now features a
braided-like mohawk -- shows up in a Chinatown alley with the finished
piece. Using ink from a pad and his fingernail, he's created a
phenomenally detailed alleyway on the backside of a foam-core For
Lease sign. In the shadowy foreground, on the right, a lone figure
smokes against a wall. The alley itself is a forbidding tunnel; but
the far end of the vortex yields to the brightest part of the work. A
gleam of hope, perhaps?

"I'd like to have my own studio and a place where I can do shows," he
says.