Nick Willing

She's sitting there, this giant oversized armchair, and next to her, as you say, is the withered mother, her withered mother.

She had just put her in a home in Highgate, and she was very, very old, and she couldn't look after herself, so she put her in this

care home in Highgate.

And that, of course, made her feel guilty, but made her feel also liberated.

You see, it's the conflicting emotions that make the picture.

On the one hand, you feel terrible about doing what you're doing, but you also think, thank God I'm not doing it anymore.

But then it brings up feelings of how you're going to feel when she dies.

I mean, it's your mother.

Will I feel horrible and grief stricken or will I feel liberated?

And then she also starts to think, oh, I'm right behind her.

This is the body that I shall become.

In not that long.

And so there are all these complicated emotions about putting her mother in a care home and how she really feels about her mother at that moment.

And then it brings up how she feels about her mother historically throughout her life.

Your relationship with your parents changes all the time, doesn't it?

As you're growing old with them and they're growing old with you.

And so this is a picture that explores those complicated feelings.

And that's her way of trying to deal with them.

We had a very, very, very old friend who was just part of the family called Bartomeu Cid Sanch, Portuguese man who was a brilliant printmaker, Barto.

We called him Barto.