Exhibitions We are all Contagious: Laura Chasman

Nurses and Nursing Assistants

I came to know these nurses and nurse’s aides while working as a social worker in a nursing home in the Mission Hill district of Boston. They are part of a larger series I painted in 2007-2008. How relevant these portraits are today, as we experience this global pandemic. Where would we be without these healers and caretakers?

Over the course of the ten years I worked in this setting I came to know many of the nurses and aides quite well. I knew about their personal lives, and I observed the ways in which they carried out their daily tasks, their moods, the uniforms they wore, as well as their strength and endurance to do their jobs. Nurses- giving out medications, injections, setting up and administering i.v.’s, feeding tubes, medicating, and bandaging bedsores, and their interminable paper work, documenting every aspect of care and observation, while nurse’s aides attended to the daily care of the residents- showering, toileting, incontinence care, combing their hair, and feeding those who could no longer feed themselves, making up their beds. The capacity to offer compassion, the patience to go slowly with people who can no longer act and move efficiently, is a gift not all possess, and at this moment in time, I am filled with gratitude.

Artist's website

Maria, 2007, gouache on board, 12" x 11"

Laura Chasman

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