When Arshile Gorky began painting, many defined him as a flagrant plagiarist. He spent the beginning of his career trying on and disposing of painting styles as casually as one would with assorted pairs of shoes. Even in his personal letters, Gorky was notorious for plagiarizing various authors and artists. However, this piece represents the most painstaking expression of his unique artistic style. The personal subject matter lends itself to such a presentation.

Gorky spent ten years perfecting this portrait of himself with his mother. He was inspired to recreate this childhood photo after his mother died in his arms following the Armenian genocide in 1919. The intention behind Gorky's work is most apparent when the painting is place next to the photo which inspired it.

Gorky's portrait represented his first experiment with flatness and incompleteness. After each layer of paint was added, he used a straight edged razor to scrape off any semblance of texture on the canvas. Gorky did not wish to accurately recreate a memory with this portrait. Instead he intended to immortalize his mother as a work of art with this venture into flatness and abstract expressionism. This style is highly reminiscent of Pablo Picasso's Blue Period.

The painfully negative space and the intentional angling of the artist's feet away from his mother highlights the separation in their relationship. The stark emphasis on the eyes also accentuates the emotional turmoil of this painting. The extension of the rectangle behind his mother's head serves as a sort of cloth of honor that presents her as a Madonna figure.

Though Gorky would later depart from this pseudo-realistic style, he would continue to push his early abstract tendencies that reveal themselves in this painting.  His abstract approach would soon evolve into a self-described combination of nature and reality filtered through memory and feeling.