"Purple Mountain Majesty" is a reinterpretation of "Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze. This contemporary work incorporates elements from Gilbert Stuart's Washington at Dorchester Heights (1806). Stuart is best known for The Athenaeum Portrait, which serves as the basis for Washington’s image on the U.S. one-dollar bill.

Leutze’s original painting, which hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, created in 1851 contains several historical inaccuracies. These include: the depiction of the American flag, which had not yet been adopted at the time of the crossing; Washington standing upright in a small boat, a nearly impossible feat; the boat itself being unrealistically small; the ice formations resembling the Rhine River in Germany; and Washington being portrayed as much older than he actually was at the time of the crossing.

"Purple Mountain Majesty" examines mythic and religious ideologies in the context of American historical narratives and modern American Politics. It contrasts themes of union, disunion, hyper-individualism versus collective identity, and collective re-imagination of historical narratives. By developing a conversation of Historical imagery elements of American pop culture and contemporary figures, places, and ideas, the work reflects on the construction of the past in reflection to modern American Society.