Hello, I actually got to this studio about 10 minutes ago and I'm all trapped up for the next painting.

It's in this studio where J. Asheri Krishnan has painted more than 150 portraits of first responders from around the world since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You know, historically portraits have celebrated status, power, wealth.

But J. Asheri wants her work to honor healing, compassion, and loss.

So her portraits are devoted to doctors, nurses, hospital employees that have all been on the front lines of the pandemic.

She uses watercolor paints and vibrant hues to capture this challenging moment in time and to also celebrate those keeping us safe in hospitals and healthcare facilities all across the globe.

Today, J. Asheri opens her studio doors to us and we're going to talk about her experiences capturing the fatigue, the fear, and yes, the hope she sees in the faces of first responders.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent. And this is coronavirus, fact versus fiction.

See, I think the most important thing for me was to sort of capture this moment in history.

This is not like painting any other portrait, but this is something very specific. And these are portraits of people who are just taking a break between patients at work or taking a breather or someone quickly is taking a picture of them while they're at work.

And I wanted to capture that moment and that emotion in their eyes.

For J. Asheri, the eyes tell the story. J. Asheri often can only see the eyes of the front line workers she paints because their faces are mostly covered by masks and shields.

In 95 masks that were made to fit their faces were so tight and they have a surgical mask on top of that and then there's a shield and sometimes a helmet.

There's several layers on their face and I can't even imagine how that feels.

J. Asheri's portraits are detailed. That's the first thing you'll notice. Every line on the faces of first responders, indentations left by masks and shields, they are included on the canvas.

Painting portraits of first responders has been J. Asheri's passion project since May of 2020. It began when she created portraits for her cousins, both doctors at Beaumont Hospital in Farmington Hills, Michigan, wearing their PPE.

I started painting my cousins just to cheer them up. They were working really long, 30-hour shifts and talking about how this was something that they had never seen before.

And once I started sharing these pictures, the reaction that I got was the big motivation behind doing these over and over again.

J. Asheri started asking friends and family to send her photos of first responders they knew. She would paint their portraits and then share the photos of the finished product on social media.

Then, first responders started contacting her online. She asked them if she could paint their portrait and then mail them the finished product. No surprise, they accepted.

The reaction was just amazing. There's big outpouring of support, love and encouragement of people. I felt like this art was doing something really big. It was not just about the art itself, but it just gave that extra impetus for people to go out, reach out and see something.

One of the first faces, J. Asheri painted, was that of anesthesiologist Dr. Elliott Fagley. He's the section head of critical care medicine at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle. That's near where she lives.

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