This work is a diptych comprising of two canvasses – an imagined still life of an asthma pump and nasal spray bottle, belonging personally to me, the artist. Since I was a child; I was prone to asthma and required various apparatus of both asthma pumps and nebulizers on a regular basis to contain it. For a while I did not need these devices, but as a young adult I suddenly required the pump again.

In addition to breathing difficulty onset by seasonal flu, these objects represented ‘affliction’ in a light sense, but something I had to deal with as a person, and therefore something I wanted to paint as an artist. The objects exist in a spotlight lit ‘nowhere world’ of a painterly background, one with visible brushstrokes and a stage-like setting. The texts ‘Bread of my Affliction’, and ‘Help Me!” refer to Asthma as an affliction, cause of pain or harm to myself, while the pump, both subjects of the paintings, act as antidotes to this, or “daily bread” – something I rely on, that saves me. I painted these works in late 2019, but they seem a little more poignant now in 2020 with the corona virus pandemic.