The period between mental stability and dementia is a matter of interpretation.
 
In this work, my father (Abba) was in a transition state. To my knowledge, my father was of sound mind, but everyone around me was enlightened to a vital piece of information. My father had Alzheimer's.
 
No one ever sat me down and told me his diagnosis and what this would mean. So I saw a once compos mentis man suddenly turn to irrational behaviour. A man I looked up to turned into a man who infuriated me—nothing my father did made sense to me. From my perspective, my father was going mad.   
 
My first encounter with the diagnosis was on my bar mitzvah [a Jewish coming-of-age ritual for boys, occurring at age 13, signifying their transition to adulthood and responsibility for their own actions and observance of Jewish commandments]. I remember walking home from shul after leining from the torah, and one of my friends turned to me and asked, "What is Alzheimer's?" to which I answered, "I don't actually know, it's something that eats away at the brain." This was the first time I registered; something was wrong. 
 
This event stays in my mind to this day. And this is the reason I produced this work. When the time came to paint a portrait of my father (as one does as an artist), the dilemma arose. At which stage do I paint him? When he was healthy, and I was young? When his brain was destroyed, and i was angry? or at the transition stage where the disease was at work, but I did not know.
 
I chose this stage as it was a delicate time in my father's and my relationship, as he was present and I was naive.