Somewhere along the way, maybe in my early teens, I began to occasionally and affectionately call my mother ‘maa-burri’, or ‘old-mother’. It’s ironic because, for the longest time, I did not and could not think of her as old. For the entirety of my life, as far back as I can remember, she has been a rock — resilient, resolute, and an unmoving presence. But as I look back, I see her in a different light. She’s growing old. She’s ageing. She’s no longer as quick as she used to be. There are lines on her face that weren’t there before. 

This portrait triptych, made a few months before she turned 60, was the first time I looked at my mother and saw an old woman. And yet, she remains a rock — moulded by the push and pull of her life, the unshakeable foundation of my own. I’m the man my mother made.