NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — It’s an unusually brisk Saturday morning in Norfolk. A slight breeze gently rocks the dangling wind chimes that signal all is calm on one back street in Ocean View.

While the notes caress the morning air, a brush guided by the hand of Elisabeth McGinn layer detail on a small canvas, and a light scratching sound competes with the soft sound of the chimes.

“I have to get little tiny beard shapes and his eye shapes, these essential facial pieces done a little crisper,” she said. “He’s been the most difficult so far of the series”

McGinn is finishing a portrait of celebrity chef Jose Andres, who has focused on feeding hungry families during the pandemic. It is the latest addition to her “Heroes of COVID-19” series, a gallery of paintings combining the well-known players of this worldwide crisis with the everyday foot-soldiers of farmworkers, police officers, doctors and nurses.

“We start to realize how these people are integral in our lives.  We can’t exist without them,” she said.

This is an art lesson in gratitude. McGinn, a U.S. Navy spouse of 35 years, works with Coastal VA Plein Air, a group of artists whose works raise money for local arts and education in Ocean View. McGinn hopes these works will serve a greater purpose.

“Maybe something happens with it and it’s shown somewhere or maybe not and they just go out to the people that I’ve painted,” she said.

McGinn started this series by painting the faces we see every day, such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci.

But McGinn also became drawn to the otherwise unknown heroes of the day. Some of her most stirring work can be seen in the eyes of exhausted doctors and nurses carrying the burden of the sick and dying. She’s inspired by the countless acts of putting others first.

“You know this time is so hard.  It’s so difficult.  I think that anytime we get a chance to see something that’s inspiring, we should take it.”

Here’s a post from nurse Jennifer Cole, which has been copied and pasted and gone viral on social media:

“I lost a patient today. He was not the first, and unfortunately he’s definitely not the last. But he was different.

“I’ve been an ER nurse my entire career, but in New York I find myself in the ICU. At this point there’s not really anywhere in the hospital that isn’t ICU, all covid 19 positive. They are desperate for nurses …

“I’ve taken care of this man the last three nights, a first for me. In the ER I rarely keep patients for even one 12 hour shift. His entire two week stay had been rough for him, but last night was the worst.

“I spent the first six hours of my shift not really leaving his room. By the end, with so many medications infusing at their maximum, I was begging the doctor to call his family and let them know. ‘He’s not going to make it’, I said.

“I was the only person in that room for 3 nights, fighting as hard as I could to keep this man alive. The doctor was able to reach the family, update them. It was decided that when his heart stopped we wouldn’t try to restart it. There just wasn’t anything else left to do.

“I called the doctor to come and mark the time of death. I wished so much that I could let his family know that while they might not have been with him, I was.

“I see someone’s Grandpa, someone’s Dad, someone’s Husband. They aren’t here with him. My heart breaks for them.

“I fold his sweater and place it in a bag with his loafers, his belongings. A coworker opens the door to a locked room; labeled bags are piled to the ceiling.

“The patients are all the same, every one. Regardless of age, health status, wealth, family, or power the diagnosis is the same, the disease process is the same, and the aloneness is the same. This city is breaking and stealing my heart simultaneously.”

Jennifer Cole

One account on Twitter which shared Cole’s words posts facts about SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19, but it’s difficult to see what’s happening on the front lines.

This piece by Jennifer Cole shows the toll this disease is having on hospitals, families, communities and health care workers.

Thank you, Jennifer Cole.