When Montreal artist Bryan Beyung told his Cambodian-born parents he was quitting his day job to paint walls for a living, he faced a lot of anxious questions.
“You really sure that’s the way? Are you really selling these paintings? What type of work is this?” Beyung recalls his father asking.
Beyung’s parents had risked a lot to get to Canada. Both Chinese-Cambodians, they met in a refugee camp on the Thailand–Cambodia border after fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime. They arrived in Quebec in 1979.
