A resident of Catholic Charities housing uses her painting to heal and bring peace to the community.
Victoria Waldrep, Catholic Charities’ director of Homeless and Transitional Services, recently received a note from a former client:
Dear Victoria,
It’s been a while but I want to send you greetings and gratitude for how you have helped me.
I just finished two paintings and the second one, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers” reminded me of you.
I pray these paintings and their descriptions bless you, particularly the second one because I know you are a peacemaker.
Love,
Pegge
After years of couch-surfing and living in her car, Pegge moved into Sacred Heart Villa, a Catholic Charities building in Southeast Portland for seniors and people with health challenges. An artist, Pegge found that her life and work flourished once she found a stable home.
She grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and withered under childhood abuse.
“Turmoil plagued me as a child,” she recalls.
Unable to speak to anyone about her trauma, Pegge turned to art to express her thoughts and experiences. A high school teacher noticed her talent and encouraged her.
“He helped me find myself in it, find my voice, find my unique signature,” Pegge recalls. The teacher helped her get admitted to a well-known art college in San Francisco. But her funds ran out and she moved on to a job and a life marked by ups and downs.
There were three marriages and more abuse.
“I wasn’t choosing well,” Pegge says.
She entered counseling for those who have survived rape and abuse. She attended a group for the children of alcoholics. She also had to face down her own drinking, which was excessive. She was diagnosed with PTSD.
Dark thoughts of suicide haunted her. After one attempt, she was pronounced dead but then was revived.
“After that, I was just trying to stay alive, trying to piece my life together,” says Pegge. “It has been a lot of work over a lot of years.”
In her gradual healing, making art was her best therapy.
“It was a way for me to express what was inside and bring it to the outside so I could make a statement,” she says. “The progress in my art tells my story.”
From childhood, she was haunted by a recurring nightmare that did not abate until she was in her 30s and created a painting about it.
It was years before she could paint a face that looked happy, but she created artworks expressing her truth for an exhibit that supported rape counseling.
In 2012, she moved to Portland, hoping to process some pain from the past with her family, who were by now living here. She tried to start healing with them, but the plan was not working out.
“Making art was significant in every step I made toward wholeness,” she says.
But she also needed shelter and wanted to break the old patterns that landed her in abusive situations.
Then Pegge found Catholic Charities and Victoria Waldrep, who helped organize efforts toward a stable life, starting with permanent housing.
“I was a mess. I couldn’t think straight,” Pegge recalls. “I was so out of it; I couldn’t do the simplest things. Victoria helped me in every kind of way. She was always there with open arms to help me get through it. I can’t tell you how much of a help she was to me.”
Pegge landed a job at UPS and eventually came the big news: a studio apartment was available in Sacred Heart Villa.
“Victoria got me squared away,” Pegge says. “When I got into my apartment, I was able to relax. I had my own space. I could just be safe and secure and finally build a life.”
She keeps her apartment tidy, including a large desk and easels for making art. She likes the quiet and appreciates her friendly neighbors.
She also revived her faith life after joining a volunteer program that served meals to people who are homeless out of Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church, where one of her heroes, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once spoke for civil rights. Inspired by the church’s warm welcome, she became a member of the church and has since joined the choir, teaches Sunday school and leads a Bible study.
Being part of that faith community fueled her art, which became less traditional and more an accessible expression of big and deep ideas. She even was invited to show her art at a Black History Month exhibit where all the other artists were Black.
Her art still communicates for her, but she has now found her voice which she uses to talk about her art and open its messages to more people.
Now she is able to paint people who look happy because she knows how it feels. Her most emotional task is portraying children who have a life of protection, security, and happiness, or are overcoming, as she has.
“I want to paint purity and beauty and happiness and joy in a child’s face,” she says. “I want to tell stories, showing people interacting in love and solving problems together.”
In a key moment, she let go of ownership and began to let God guide her art. She melded realism with abstraction and symbolism. The result is an appealing and moving metaphor on canvas. Instead of representing a moment, her paintings have a timeless quality but are clear about having faith.
“When I got humble with the art, it started going in directions I never could have foreseen,” Pegge says. “I’ve just learned to trust God in the process. The process of creativity is what God’s love is about. So, I trust that process. I say, ‘Ok, God, this is your show.”
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