Outline:
A Unique Approach to Painting
Mernet Larsen, known for her painting Getting Measured (1999), which graces the cover of the Winter 2025 issue of Art in America, is featured in a recent profile. From her home in Tampa, Florida, Larsen shared the story behind the canvas, which is displayed in full.
This painting marked a significant shift in Larsen’s artistic journey. She had been exploring abstract art but felt a strong desire to create more traditional paintings of people, places, and everyday objects. Her inspiration came from Piero della Francesca, a Renaissance artist whose work she admired. While she had previously created representational pieces, she didn’t want to return to conventional realism. Instead, she decided to use one of her abstract paintings as a starting point.
Larsen revisited a piece based on an unfinished 12th-century Japanese painting of the Katano Shrine. She was captivated by its composition. She pondered: What would happen if she transformed this into a scene? She approached it like a Rorschach test, asking herself what the structure and composition made her feel. It seemed to evoke the image of someone measuring another person. Growing up, she often made and altered her own clothes, so she was familiar with the experience of standing on something and being measured.
The Technique of Parallel Perspective
Larsen chose to use parallel perspective, a technique found in 12th-century Japanese narrative painting and among architects. In this method, parallel lines do not recede or converge; they remain parallel. She closely followed her 12th-century source, except she rotated everything, turning a frontal view into a three-quarter view. To make the painting solid, she first inferred volume before filling it in, similar to a coloring book. She kept the details minimal because you don’t need much information to recognize something. Her focus was on the space she created and the statement she made about reality, realism, and perception. She never expected to continue working this way for the next 25 years.
Exploring Different Perspectives
After creating Indecisive Woman, a self-portrait of her trying to decide what to do next, Larsen painted herself—or rather, a woman character, as she wasn’t aiming for a likeness—in a three-quarter view with geometric volumes and parallel perspective. However, she rendered the deep hallway in the background using one-point perspective. She wanted to include multiple types of perspective within a single space, making it clear that perspective is just a tool. It’s something people use to create an effect, but it isn’t reality; it isn’t accurate. She wasn’t interested in creating an illusionistic space. That’s why she leaves about an eighth of an inch around the edges of her canvases, so the image doesn’t feel like it drops off a cliff. All these elements contribute to the viewer’s uncertainty about their position in the painting, potentially allowing them to imagine themselves in the place of the characters.
The Impact of Perspective in Art
Larsen’s approach to painting challenges traditional notions of space and perception. By using different perspectives, she invites viewers to question their understanding of reality. Her work encourages a deeper engagement with the artwork, as the viewer becomes part of the narrative. This unique perspective has allowed her to explore complex themes while maintaining a sense of simplicity and clarity in her compositions.
Through her innovative techniques and thoughtful exploration of perspective, Larsen continues to push the boundaries of contemporary art. Her work serves as a reminder that art can be both a reflection of reality and a means of questioning it. As she continues to evolve as an artist, her contributions to the field remain significant and thought-provoking.