For Mernet Larsen, Painting Is a Matter of Perspective

When Mernet Larsen was in her 70s, the project she had been working on her entire life met a moment. It was the 2010s, and painters everywhere were grappling with how the digital realm affected what we see. People seeing Larsen’s paintings for the first time often assumed that they were made using a computer, reading her signature blocky figures as robotic or pixelated—something a machine would create. But they are not computational at all. What Larsen has spent 50-odd years explorin