Dorchester Nursing Student Leaves Paintings Around Boston For People To Take

BOSTON (CBS) - If you see an oil painting around Boston, chances are it's not there by mistake.

"I just thought it would be really nice if you're walking down the street and you see this scene you really like and you look down and there was an oil painting of it, that would be really cool right?" said Jake Garcia.

So in a stroke of genius, the Dorchester artist decided to leave his paintings around the city for the taking, letting people know where to find them on his Twitter account @JakeScapes.

"I'll see something I like. I'll set up, I'll do a painting of it. And I'll do my best to leave it somewhere in the vicinity," said Garcia.

He's left four of his oil paintings in South Boston, and plans to keep it going.

"We've all been inside and a beautiful thing to do is to just go outside and just enjoy the sounds and the sights and the smells and just paint what you see," he said. "I think that's really nice and I think more people need to do it."

Garcia is a nursing student at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. He paints in his spare time and says he only took up the hobby in the last five months.

"I'm doing something I really love. At the end of the day that's why I'm doing this. It's very exciting to see where this will all go," said Garcia.

While the best place to find out where Jake is leaving his paintings is on social media, he let WBZ-TV in on his plans to leave some of his artwork in South Boston over the next week.

"I just want to try to be an efficient human being that makes people happy. I want to help people," said Garcia. "And if it brings them some joy, I think that's really sweet."