This painting began in 2017 and was primarily and customarily abstract but included some of the blue chequer pattern and some tulips, long gone (one green stem which is still visible). I put it away for 5 years. Then last year my beloved mother died after a 2year illness and I felt compelled to begin a series of portraits of her, of my father who died when I was 11, and of me, something that is not usual in my work. I have worked from time to time directly from photographic imagery since I began painting but those images are most often gradually subsumed under the layers. In the recent series the various photographs I referred to were taken when we were all in our twenties. This painting was resurrected again and of the series is more inward, less immediately obvious, with interference across my face (where the paint has been rubbed back towards the light), providing necessary emphasis on surface repetition but which I also think relates to neural pathways and synapses. I was looking to the past to find vital warmth and connection.