Duty, colored pencil on paper, 8” × 10”, 2021. © Isabella Calisi-Wagner.

AJN‘s Art of Nursing column this month features Duty, a drawing of a nurse who cared for New York City artist and writer Isabella Calisi-Wagner as she recovered from emergency brain surgery in 2020. Calisi-Wagner remains friends with the nurse today. She says she drew the portrait to “celebrate the dedication of nurses.”

Another recent artwork honoring nurses in AJN is Double Shift, a charcoal drawing by artist and retired RN Therese Cipiti Herron. She explains that the image captures the “essence of exhaustion” experienced by nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic, referencing nurses being utilized for extended shifts and performing in crisis mode. “I salute nurses as they carry on like never before,” she says.

Double Shift, charcoal on paper, 11” × 14”, 2021. © Therese Cipiti Herron.

In the early days of the pandemic, news reports about health care workers’ lack of access to adequate PPE inspired artist Jim Leitz to paint Get Them What They Need! This work was featured in AJN‘s June 2020 issue.

Get Them What They Need!, watercolor, 5” × 5”, 2020. © Jim Leitz.

Each month in the Art of Nursing column, AJN publishes visual art and poetry related to nursing, health, and health care. Interested in submitting your work? Click here for more information.