Mother Memory
For this show, Peter Liashkov has chosen four images from the imposing pool of his work, intending to provide a bird view of his mother’s long, complex existence. Such an abridged summary necessarily implies significant distance between each of the “snapshots,” hence highlighting the metamorphoses of a life crossed by constant migration and radical shifts of status, language, culture, and habits. From nineteen-twenties Latvia, where a talented young woman illustrates fairy tales, to the job as a governess in nineteen-thirties Rome, to post-World War II France, where her son is born, to nineteen-fifties Argentina, to the US where Olga, much later, faces the hardships of old age, to raucous Los Angeles, with its babel of tongues and humanities that her blurred mind can no longer harmonize. I am sharing the last—and most painful—of the images, which somehow implies them all, and poignantly elucidates how the artist treats the human figure (the whole, or just the face), how he excavates and explores its every fold, questioning the flesh to the point of eroding it, laying bare, together with the present truth, the numerous layers it conceals and reveals. Both when cast on a single individual or when tackling collective issues, Liashkov’s gaze is a laser, never failing to expose (or embrace) the past history that inevitably underscores the here and now, altering its contours and its colors. The artist’s frequent use of fiberglass mesh evokes architectural construction, or rather demolition—what emerges under ripped wallpaper, the very soul of the walls, what circulates and throbs under the makeup, under the skin.
-Toti O’brien
Lost In Hollywood
The central figure, Vasilisa, is an image of a young girl borrowed from a Russian folktale, illustrated by the well-known artist Ivan Bilibin. During our immigrant years in Argentina my Russian-born mother painted exact replicas of Bilibin’s image of Vasilisa carrying a glowing skull as a torch given to her by a witch who lives in a hut supported by chicken legs.
As a tribute to Olga, my mother, I have replicated an enlarged version of Vasilisa on coarse yellow mesh used in the plastering process. This mesh resembles the thread technique of cross-stitching frequently used in folk costume. I have then colorized the image in translucent washes of acrylic, touches of opaque oil and dusted with thin layers of crush glass. Vestiges of street photography from the urban environment of Los Angeles surround Vasilisa, hence the name of the piece, Lost in Hollywood.
Lost In Hollywood
Acrylic, oil, crushed glass, print transfer on fiberglass mesh
84X48in
2016
Snapshots of My Mother
Puerto San Martin, Argentina 1953
A LIFE: OLGA
Photo by Ellen Giamportone
Imagine a woman in her 50’s with streaming grey hair wearing a fake leopard skin coat striding defiantly through the streets of a village, she’s grocery shopping. She’s followed by a shy boy of 13 who feels slightly embarrassed because people are staring.
Today in 2025 as I turn the pages of a worn photo album, I encounter sepia tinted photos of young girls in elaborate finery, graduating from a finishing school in Latvia. The faded photos show a striking young woman, gypsy-like, in front of an easel contemplating a work in progress, which turns out to be a copy of a Russian fairy tale, Vasilisa, painted by a well-known illustrator, Ivan Bilibin. These are followed by photos of waving hands at train stations and young people practicing calisthenics at beaches, all of which speak of carefree times in the summers of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s.
This is Olga, a free spirit and an amateur artist making a living as a roving governess throughout pre-WWII central Europe. In the early 1930’s she spent a couple of years in Rome, swimming in the Adriatic and painting more Russian illustrations that were bought by her enthusiastic English sponsor.
Already in her 30’s she encounters my father in Paris, falls in love, they marry and settle in Rouen, France, where I was born in 1939.
Forty years later in Los Angeles, cut to a disheveled old woman in a rage, frustrated because she is unable to communicate her thoughts, her brain scrambled, she is motioning madly as a result of a stroke.
From this body of work in this exhibit there is a portrait of Olga as a recumbent woman in a shawl gazing nostalgically into the past. The larger piece painted on fiberglass mesh is a personification ofVasilisa as Olga, holding a skull, lighting her way through a surrounding frieze of images that depict the chaos of the Los Angeles cityscape. And thirdly a brightly colored digital portrait of Olga with dramatic shadows on her face, wildly gesticulating into the unknown.
As I mull over memories about my mother’s life I am gripped by profound sadness about the unraveling of her life in her later years as she confronted personal disillusionment, financial hardship and mental anguish. At the same time I have immense gratitude for her legacy of unshakable spirit and have followed her steps in becoming an artist.