The Anniversary of 100 years for the Statue of Liberty 1986

This is Robert Peak’s painting to commemorate the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. Look at the soft color palette, it's quite different from your usual patriotic hues, isn’t it? I can almost see Peak experimenting, layering color over color, building up the form of the statue as if from a dream. The gesture of the brushstrokes, they create an emotional feeling of exuberance. I wonder what Peak was thinking when he made it. I imagine he was thinking of the statue as a symbol of hope and freedom. The texture and colors that he employs, they shape our experience of the painting and allow the work to communicate emotion and intention. Painters have always been in conversation, you know, and each painter builds on the work of those who came before, inspiring new ideas. I can see in Peak’s work a commitment to pushing the boundaries of representation, just as abstract painters do, embracing uncertainty and ambiguity to make something new.