When Daniel Mazzone walked away from home at age 15 to live on the streets, he wasn’t just leaving behind the comfort of his family and their residence, but also a passion for art his art-instructor mother ignited in him over years toiling over stained glass and ceramic pieces. As he slept in Scarborough movie theatres that only charged $2 for admission and took shelter in mall bathroom stalls, little did he know he would one day become one of Toronto’s most sought-after artists with celebrity customers and a six-month waiting list.After nearly five years of homelessness, the now 37-year-old says, “I was thinking I have got to get off the street. I am going to die here ... I wanted to make a difference. I didn’t just want to be another person going through the motions.”So just shy of his 20th birthday, Mazzone headed back to the home he had fled amidst what he calls “topsy turvy” times, graduated from high school and became a mortgage broker.But something was still missing. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “Once Monday came, I was looking forward to Friday. I needed an outlet.”That’s exactly what he found when he was channel-surfing one day in 2011 and he came across a television show featuring artwork. It brought back floods of memories and reignited his artistic passion. He bought a canvas, five feet by four feet and “at first, I was going to paint, but then I thought, I don’t really know how to paint,” he says. Then he remembered an old newspaper collection he had and some of the stained glass techniques his mother had taught him. They inspired him to start creating a collage of Robert De Niro’s Taxi Driver character Travis Bickle — the first hints of an art-pop style he’s developed to include bright flourishes, newspapers dating back to the days of Napoleon and George Washington, and depictions of Michael Jackson, Prince, Charlie Chapl ...
|
