Once-homeless artist savors chance to give back to Hearth

When 81-year-old artist Peter Phelps offered to make paintings for his fellow tenants at the Spencer House in Roxbury, there was one thing he didn't count on.

"Everybody wanted flowers," he said of his neighbors in the subsidized housing for the elderly. "They're crazy about flowers."

Phelps' paintings, many of flowers, are hanging for the public to see in City Hall's Piemonte Room. On Sept. 20 and 21, 55 of his works will be auctioned off to benefit Hearth, a nonprofit organization that helps find housing for homeless seniors.

The road to Phelps's current digs, where he sometimes paints for up to eight hours a day, was a long one. He came to Boston from Springfield almost two years ago with the hope of enrolling in a non-surgical clinical trial at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to treat the cancer in his left lung. He didn't know, however, that the Institute offers outpatient services only.

"I assumed it was a hospital. I came with the clothes on my back," he said.

Phelps, who had been living in a modest home in Springfield and working as an artist, spent that first night - and nearly every other night for the next 10 months - at Shattuck Shelter in Jamaica Plain. He eventually enrolled in a clinical trial at Dana-Farber and spent his days receiving radiation treatments.

While he was living at Shattuck, Phelps's cancer went into remission. He also met a Hearth caseworker at the shelter who helped him apply for a subsidized apartment.

Now Phelps no longer sells his paintings. Instead he gives them away - to his neighbors and to Hearth. He said hopes the auction can benefit the organization he credits with saving his life.

"It's give-back time. They gave to me and I give back."

KIMBERLY SANFELIZ