Description: First Born, painted during the summer of 1980, was inspired by a situation I encountered when I went to spend the summer with my mother after the death of my father. The painting reflects a beautiful young woman who has just recently experienced motherhood for the first time. My niece and her husband had moved in with my mother a few months earlier, and soon afterwards their first child was born. My perception of the situation was that here is this person who appears to feel that she has done something profoundly unique, perhaps created a miracle. Therefore, her "bounden" duty and only responsibility for that summer, or so it seemed, was to tenderly hold her baby while I did all the cooking, dishwashing, and general housework.