Frank Bowling came to Britain from Guyana in his mid-teens. He studied painting at the Royal College of Art in London but, after numerous rejections by the art establishment, he moved to New York. There, influenced by friends such as the painter Larry Rivers and the critic Clement Greenberg, he gave up his figurative style and began to work in the idiom of Abstract Expressionism. Bowling has worked almost exclusively with oil or acrylic on canvas since this time, and this print can therefore be seen as an interesting departure in his work.

Although Bowling was sent away to Britain to finish his schooling, his mother remained an enduring influence in his life and work. This portrait seems simultaneously to show an individual. and to speak of the strong matriarchal figure that is virtually a stereotype in Afro-Caribbean society.

The print was made as a fund-raiser for Aljira, a centre for Contemporary Art in Newark, New Jersey, which staged a retrospective of Bowling’s work in 2003.