To Bring Peace To Grieving Parents
2016-07-15JulianaLaBianca
Juliana LaBianca
导读:若有家庭经历失去孩子的可怕噩梦,Luigi Quintos就会借助艺术,用濒死婴儿的肖像画来安慰他们。
In January 2014, when Luigi Quintos, 54, held his newborn grandson, Ayden, for the first time, the baby weighed just over a pound. Ayden had been born two months premature, and doctors thought he might not make it. Heart-breaking, Luigi turned to art to calm himself. He had been drawing portraits of people off and on since grade school.
This time, Luigi drew a graphite portrait of Ayden with his parents—Luigis son and daughter-in-law—looking down at him. “It was my way of making sure theyd always be together,” he says.
After five months in hospital, Ayden pulled through. Happy with the good news, Luigi set up a Facebook page, Priceless Images, where he offered to draw portraits of other kids who were sick or had died. “I thought my work might offer comfort,” he says.
Within days, requests filled his inbox. Often, parents e-mail Luigi a photo of their child along with a description of his or her illness or how the child died. Sometimes they request that the artist leave out oxygen tubes that appear in the photo, and one family asked for their childs eyes to be drawn open, an image they never got to see in real life.
Each drawing takes Luigi, who works as a driver in Salem, Oregon, a few hours. When hes done, he mails an 11-by-14-inch portrait to the parents and posts the drawing on his Facebook page.
To date, Luigi has completed 450 portraits, with another 350 on the waiting list. But Luigi doesnt mind the workload. “The drawings give families something they can hold on to,” he says.
Vocabulary
premature adj. 早产的
graphite portrait n. 石墨肖像画
oxygen tube n. 氧气管
(Do you think Luigi is a kind-hearted man? )