Sunday Morning, Liberty!

#86004     60″ X 40″     oc

In Chen’s book “The Spirit of Liberty”, he states: “The driving desire of all human beings to make choices cannot be taken away; nor can it be ceded successfully. The craving dwells innately within the heart and spirit of human beings.Whatever our circumstances, as long as we are rational, we are in Liberty’s power forever.”To celebrate the Statue of Liberty’s Centennial several years ago, Chen painted more than 100 iconographic tributes to her, “calling into service his extraordinary erudition, his effusive love for all of humankind’s varied expressions of culture over past millennia, and his passion for the eternal truth, of humankind’s universal freedom-seeking spirit.””Sunday Morning, Liberty!” is a quintessential American piece, which takes a popular image from Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967), who frequently took his images from stark, seedy, urban America.Chen’s introduction of the Liberty icon in such a dramatic fashion drives home the point that even when no human beings are in view, the social context is a product of human decisions.

by Lawrance Jeppson