This work, Veil of Grief, and the paintings Nexus For J, M.and Doug Morris were created as part of a collaborative exhibit titled "Life After Death: Embracing the Queer Widow".  I'm half the age of my father and I've lost countless more friends and acquaintances to death than he has. AIDS is not the only cause of death to claim these friends, though after more than twenty years into the pandemic, it has taken its fair share.  When my friends die, the sensations are still this painful every time.  Watching this kind of death and dying take place naturally leads one into arcane fields of thought, and one avenue I followed provided me with the discovery that every time there has been a plague of some sort somewhere in the world, the universal reactions are exactly the same: most of them are not honorable.  It is with very little comfort that I know this fact, but as an artist I can try to redeem it by creating good from the evil, because, as Joseph Campbell asserts: "the purpose of art is to render a sense of existence, not an assurance of some meaning."