Crying City

Told in enigmatic washes of acrylic, Yuan Chen’s "Crying City" describes states of being. What I see in the painting (or, more appropriately, feel) is subjective and colored by my own experience, but—regardless of how it strikes you—the painting’s subject matter belongs to the emotional rather than the physical world. Of course, the mental and physical worlds are hopelessly intertwined, and this inseparability is mirrored in the way the viewer interprets the work. For me, it recalls my life in the city (particularly during the peak of Covid lockdown) and the increasingly stifling nature of the existence I found there. I was born and raised in a city, and after four years in a very rural college, I gleefully returned to the excitement of urban life. However, the colorful energy of city life (represented in the almost pastel colors of the present work) began to be consumed by a bleaker palette of grays that eventually drove me from my place of birth. The entirety of my experience is encapsulated in "Crying City". Even though the specificity of my relationship with the work clearly did not factor into Chen's intentions, her painting has communicated it more accurately than my words ever could. This is the most crucial function of art: emotional communication.