Liberty Guiding the People

About Liberty Guiding the People

This contemporary figurative oil painting explores themes of politics and culture.

Deborah Root’s dynamic colourful compositions tell an intimate story about her experience during socially relevant and politically important moments in time.

“Liberty Guiding the People” depicts a scene from the G20 demonstration in Toronto in 2010. Over the 3 days of the protest, the police became increasingly violent towards protesters. This painting shows the moment when the atmosphere began to turn and no one was sure what was going on or what to expect. In what had begun as a carnivalesque atmosphere, people are still riding their bikes and taking selfies, but there's a new feeling in the air. Soon the demonstrators will be subject to "kettling" and mass arrests.
The title refers to Delacroix's heroic and rather propagandistic painting of the 1830 revolution in France--but here, we see the reality, people are confused and moving in different directions, unsure of what to do. The tondo form allowed me to experiment with scale. The jumbled bicycle wheels express the confusion many were beginning to feel, with the police in a row waiting with plastic zip ties.” Deborah Root

Deborah Root is a painter, writer, lecturer and professor. She has written extensively on the relationship between visual arts and cultural politics. Root was born in Seattle and attended university in Canada before settling here. She acquired both her BA and MA in Archeology and Anthropology at Canadian universities and finally a PH.D. from the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at York University. Her 1996 book entitled ‘Cannibal Culture’ was included in a 2017 Buzzfeed list (digital media company) of the 16 books to read to understand white supremacy in the United States.
She has taught at several Canadian universities and has sat on the boards of a number of Toronto-based art and political magazines. Deborah Root has exhibited her paintings in both solo and group shows in Canada, the U.S. and Europe since 2017.