Hakob Hakobyan created series of canvases, where the feelings of sadness and loneliness are emphasized. The "Sorrow" is one of these works that belongs to the artist's series of art dedicated to the miserable. suffering human-character who is powerless to fight the destiny. This is the sorrow of the human without homeland living far from his motherland shrouding the pain of Genocide in himself and in other generations.

Sergey Parajanov usually doesn't comment on his works so as each viewer could feel and describe the art on their own way. This work belongs to the series of non-described works of the master as well.

Whitney Museum of American Art: "This portrait of Arshile Gorky and his mother is based on a photograph taken in Armenia in 1912, when the artist was just a child. Three years later, during the Ottoman Turk campaign of Genocide against the Armenians, Gorky, his mother, and his younger sister all survived a death march, but his mother never recovered her health. She died in 1919 from starvation. The following year, the fifteen-year-old Gorky immigrated to the United States with his sister. Gorky, however, did not simply copy the photograph, but painted a meditation on remembrance: the white apron worn by Gorky’s mother makes her appear statue-like, and other areas of the painting seem, like memory itself, unfinished and mutable. The figures’ searching gazes lend the composition psychological intensity, eliciting sympathy yet avoiding outright pathos or sentimentality."

Sarkis Hamalbashian: "Since my childhood, as an heir to survivors of the Armenian Genocide, I have heard stories about it and later tried to depict my impressions in my works. Later I realized that those stories were messages that should be passed to future generations through their representation in our works, until the recognition of the Genocide and the fulfillment of justice."