Larissa Chernin

I devoted the epilogue of The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother to my relationship with Larissa. Towards the end of the epilogue I wrote:

"A few years ago Larissa painted a portrait of our relationship....There is a woman in a long granny dress, of the type I wore frequently during the seventies. The woman is followed by a blond little girl with curly hair, a self-portrait of my daughter. The two walk through a vibrant patch of yellow, perhaps a field of wheat or rye. The mother and child come from the left, from out of the past, with steady determination, beneath a sky that shows a small yellow ball of sun next to a large yellow sickle moon. This is a landscape in which opposites have been brought together. Work that leads to wholeness is underway. Together, the mother and child walk towards a mysterious blue house with a red roof. It dominates the foreground of their painted world and draws them toward it.

I used this painting for the cover of In My Mother's House, my book about the generations of women in my mother's family. To describe this painting accurately I (only have to) look behind me at the far wall of my office. There I have displayed this portrait through which (in my interpretation) my daughter left behind all earlier stories, their protection and blame, their separation and anguish and loss, to portray the two of us in a new relationship.

Yes, there we are, serenely on our way through luminous thickets of paint toward our house of transformations. Once there, who can say what will happen between us?

Is this a house where a birth will take place?"

From Larissa:

"When I go out to draw I am looking for settings in which to place figures. The drawings are like notes to remind me of what I saw. Back in my studio, in the process of translating the drawing into a painting, I invent the colors and the details of the scene. Sometimes the figures in my paintings were actually there at the time of the drawing, but more likely they appear later.

A particular setting will attract me because of a combination of natural and man-made forms. I love backyards and parks, because of the trees, grass and flowers but also because of the benches, fountains and fences. In fact, my most recent paintings have in common a tension between orderly man-made forms, and the more wild, organic forms of nature.

In choosing a vantage-point, I look for views where there is a way out, spatially. I've always liked the Renaissance style of portraiture where the figure was placed near a window showing a distant landsscape. That mysterious vista has always intrigued me. I am continually striving in my paintings to show what is not visible, as if the real subject of the painting were inside a doorway, or amongst the trees in a forest, or just over the horizon."