Elaine Goble specializes in graphite or pencil portraits. In 1995, she drew her first war picture – a portrait of six veterans at a Remembrance Day service. Three years later, in 1998, she depicted her eight-year-old daughter politely distracted as an elderly woman described her own Second World War experiences. Goble realized that her daughter had no understanding of conflict and its extraordinary and sometimes devastating effects on human life and experience.

As a result, Goble undertook a project to explore in portraiture the consequences of war for survivors – the people who still live in ordinary communities across Canada. She found her subjects in veterans' hospitals – for the most part in the community of Ottawa. Her portraits are direct, realistic, and unsentimental.