Statue of Liberty 1986

Here's Malcolm Morley's watery take on Lady Liberty. Look at those washes of blue and grey – seems like he's caught the sky on a changeable day. I can almost hear the seagulls! Painting it must have been a dance between control and chance, letting the water guide the pigment. I bet Morley was wrestling with the weight of that icon, the Statue of Liberty, trying to capture its essence with these fleeting strokes. It reminds me of Turner, that feeling of trying to grasp something immense. See how the washes aren't too thick, they just float on the surface? Each brushstroke feels like a breath. And the dark smudges at the bottom are like a grounding force, even as everything else is in flux. Painters are always in conversation, pinching ideas from the past and twisting them into something new. Morley took something solid and turned it into a whisper.