This is a portrait of my mother. I approached it with the belief that creating could be a site of healing—that through art, something between us could shift.

Spending time with her essence allowed me to see her differently. To loosen old narratives. To hold both truth and tenderness at once. And in doing so, I recognized that this process reaches beyond me—it speaks to the quiet, often unfinished work of healing our relationships with our caregivers.

I was once told portraits are too personal to matter. But portraits are everywhere—lining museum walls, asking us to feel something for people we have never met. Strangers who become familiar because their humanity echoes our own.

So the work asked more of me: to create something that transcends her likeness. A piece that lives in the emotional space between us all—where memory, grief, love, and repair coexist.