Manitoba Duo 1996

Ivan Eyre made this painting, Manitoba Duo, using flat areas of colour to create a surreal landscape. The surface of this painting feels very flat, so unlike me, he’s not interested in the materiality of the paint. The colour palette is fascinating - the way the blue of the sky becomes the inside of the figures’ heads, there’s a beautiful unity between the people and the landscape they inhabit. Look at the way the blue shapes are echoed in the forms on the table at the bottom of the painting, which are then reflected in the distant landscape behind the figures, as though they are one and the same. This echoes Magritte, but here there’s something unique. It shows how painting can open our minds to different ways of seeing. It embraces ambiguity, asking us to consider the relationship between perception and reality.