Tools of the Trade

Photograph by Buzz Larson

Some artists’ paintings command thousands of dollars. Mary Larson’s portraits command thousands of socks, or gloves, or other items that Ms. Larson then passes along to the homeless and to poor patients at Pioneer Square Clinic, in Seattle.

Ms. Larson, who paints as a hobby, is a nurse at the clinic, which provides medical, mental-health, and other services and is part of Harborview Medical Center.

She says she hit on the idea to use her art as a bartering tool several years ago as she was hanging some of her pictures for exhibition and sale at a Starbucks coffee shop. Although she has stopped tallying, she estimates she has “sold” more than 100 paintings this way and in the process netted many thousands of dollars’ worth of goods for the patients at Pioneer Square and other facilities across the country that serve homeless and other poor people.

Some buyers have been creative with their offers. A portrait of one patient, titled “Kenny,” for example, fetched 250 McDonald’s coupon booklets; another, titled “Charles,” sold for 250 Starbucks coupons worth $5 each. A portrait of a patient named Patrick was sold for a granite bench that Ms. Larson had placed at Mount Olivet Cemetery, in Renton, Wash., where the ashes of many area homeless people are buried. Long-distance buyers who have purchased Ms. Larson’s portraits have donated goods to shelters in Alabama, Minnesota, Montana, and New York, among other places.

Ms. Larson, who grew up in Seattle, says that ever since she volunteered at a local shelter in high school, she knew she wanted her career to involve helping homeless people. “I just had an overwhelming sense of what a privilege it was to share in these hard times with them and to try and bring some kind of joy to their day,” she says. “I knew that those were the folks that I wanted to work with.”

Here, Mary Larson poses with some of her subjects and their portraits.