16″ square oil on gessoed Masonite panel

I painted a gauche version of this painting a couple of years ago. It was titled “Nesting Pair”. I painted at the hospital again today, and I watched countless couples walk by. I watched men push their wives in wheelchairs, or wives walk while their husbands were wheeled down the hall in a hospital bed. I thought about how illness might be a thorn in their lives. There are all kinds of thorns that pop up in relationships: finances, work problems, even internal problems where the thorns are coming from the relationship itself. I really admire couples who work to stay a nesting pair despite the thorns that pop up in their lives.