Bryan Lewis Saunders is a Tennessee-based performance artist, poet, and illustrator who has drawn at least one self-portrait every day since March 30, 1995. As of now, he has over 8,700 self-portraits, collected in stacks of hardbound sketchbooks.
As an experiment, for 50 days straight Saunders took a different drug every day before doing his self-portrait. All of the drugs were free, either given to him by junkie neighbours in his rundown, $18-a-month apartment and doctors who see his art and assume he’s psychotic – he can’t decide if he thinks he is or not – or administered to him during brief mental hospital visits. The frequent drug use gave him mild brain damage that was thankfully repairable, and he’s still adding to the collection, albeit with more time in between.
The drawings are personal, varied, and reflect the experience of the intoxicants they’re associated with. Portraits on weed, salvia, and butane honey oil are whimsical, with an almost child-like use of primary colours. More frequently, they reflect anxiety, darkness, and a fracture of self-identity.

For Lucas Joel Macauley, art has been a refuge. His life took a turn after seeing a successful career as a tattoo artist and shop owner come crashing down due to addiction. Macauley found himself living on the streets for several years after losing his most important relationships and all of his possessions. Through that entire time, his creativity was a ray of light that guided him, and now, for the past eight months, he's not only been artistically productive but, more importantly, sober.
Macauley's unfortunate foray into drugs began in 2011 when he was prescribed morphine after a motorcycle accident. Coupled with the pressures of his successful career and mental health issues that had gone unaddressed, they collided to create a toxic explosion.
“Your addiction kind of takes the driver’s seat and I hated that. I never wanted to be in that situation,” shares Macauley. “It slowly just took things away from you. I would lose a car or a nice place I had or a boat or whatever. It was the things I had built up with my success—everything got taken away. [Losing] relationships were the hardest. Eventually, you don’t have a place to live, you don’t have a car to sleep in. I remember selling a car for drugs one night and realizing—I don’t have a place to sleep.”
Macauley eventually got himself into rehab where he spent two and a half months in recovery. During that time, he painted over 100 pieces of art. Today he continues to paint and, with each canvas, unravels a new layer of what he's gone through. “My art is reflective of my own experiences completely,” he tells My Modern Met. “I am giving people that look at my art a direct look into my mind, my past my memories, and my pain. I have one goal with my art and that is to tell the truth.”
Each canvas is dotted with words and phrases that spell out the judgments that people experiencing homelessness face while trying to survive on the streets. These words cut deeply and it's impossible not to feel the weight of Macauley's pain when looking at each scene. Pouring himself into his work has become a sort of therapy for him, as he's able to unpack his experience without fear.
“My art has been therapeutic but so much more,” Macauley tells My Modern Met. “While painting, I sometimes breakdown—no words are spoken. I am alone with my memory and as it gets laid out on the canvas I am able to see how far I've come from sleeping on the street. Even during that time I would find paint in dumpsters by job sites and old drywall pieces of cardboard and paint in order to get something off my chest. When I was homeless and in addiction I felt a loneliness that consumed my entire being. The canvas became my friend, my psychologist,  and my priest, in some cases, to absolve me of my sins when there was no one else.”
Macauley continues to paint, often with his brother, and sell his work. He hopes that people will appreciate his art and use it to learn to love themselves. He also hopes that it will force people to question their own attitudes about those suffering from addiction and living on the streets. “Why are we letting our brothers and sisters, our mothers, fathers, friends, and every other person that becomes afflicted with homelessness or the disease of addiction, mental health, or despair fall? Why do we turn our heads and down our eyes to avoid such an obvious problem? Where is the love? My story is just one of many.”

Michael Panteli is a cartoonist and graphic illustrator who cut his teeth working for early 90s UK cult comics Zit and Smut.

His Illustration work includes a comicbook series 'Joe Headstock' for www.fender.com, which gained an international following.

He has designed various theatre posters and has also worked on several music projects, including album and merchandising artwork for the accomplished singer/guitarist/songwriter Nile Marr, son of Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.

Michael Panteli is also a long- time collaborator with once of his key influencers - underground comic book artist Robert Crumb. They started corresponding by mail in 2001 and have been pen friends ever since, working together on several artworks.

His influences include golden age ('pre-code') comics of the 30s, 40s and early 50s, art deco and art nouveau advertising, WWI and WWII propaganda posters and the underground comics scene of the late 60s and early 70s particularly the works of Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton.

Plastic Jesus installed the golden statue that has a belt strapped across its left arm, mid-injection, on Friday morning at the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and La Brea Ave., according to his Instagram account. A direct commentary on Philip Seymour Hoffman's untimely death from a heroin overdose early February, a placard at the foot of the statue reads, "Hollywood's Best Kept Secret."

The artist, who says his cousin and his cousin's wife both died from heroin overdoses, is making giving his take about heroin use in the industry. "When you live in Hollywood and work in the industry, you realize how endemic drug use really is—affecting everyone from aspiring actors and actresses to sound and lighting guys to agents and managers," Plastic Jesus told the N.Y. Daily news. "But it's only when you have a high profile death like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Whitney Houston that it hits the news."

Another Drug Related Sculpture in honor of the Oscars celebration this weekend and L.A.’s notoriously hard-partying ways, street artist Plastic Jesus has erected a life-size Oscar statue on its hands and knees, ready to snort two massive lines of fake cocaine (faux-caine?).
The figure was spotted on Thursday morning by the Hollywood Reporter, who reports that it currently sits at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.

It’s not the first time the artist has used the highly symbolic gold statue to make a comment about the drug-addled lifestyle that is commonplace in Hollywood and other high-octane industries. Last year, just weeks after actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died after mixing too many drugs, Plastic Jesus created an eight-foot Oscar with a needle in its arm and placed it on Hollywood Boulevard. While both of the statues riff on drug culture and the destructive nature of fame, this year’s feels a bit more lighthearted, since it isn’t directly connected to a celebrity death.

Nick Stern, a photographer who works with the anonymous artist, told LAist: “The piece is intended to draw attention to Hollywood’s hidden problem of drug addiction that affects hundreds of people in the show biz industry and is largely ignored until the death of a high profile A-list celebrity.”

According to his website, Plastic Jesus has been heralded as “The Banksy of L.A.” by both BuzzFeed and Complex. In addition to the Oscar sculptures, which are arguably his most famous works, he does stencil-based street art (which, indeed, reeks of Banksy) and street-based installations, including a giant mousetrap with credit cards on top of it and a giant dollar bill tilted toward two giant lines of cocaine. We’re definitely seeing a theme here.