Elizabeth Rynecki

Laurel Zuckerman: What inspired you to write Chasing Portraits?

Elizabeth Rynecki: There wasn’t really a single source of inspiration; a number of things contributed to my desire to write this book. Of course, I grew up surrounded by my great-grandfather’s art, but knew little about the backstory or how the art made its way from Poland to California after the Second World War, so natural curiosity played a role as I got older and began to ponder my heritage more closely.

When Grandpa George died I learned from his memoir that my family only had a small percentage of the original body of work, so I wondered what had happened to all the other pieces, but it was quite a long time before I felt ready to pursue the art, and even longer before I felt I had enough of a story to tell. CLICK FOR MORE