Ballerina 1996

Ivan Eyre made this painting, Ballerina, at an undetermined date, and with it, he lets us see the world through a very particular lens. There's a real sense of play at work here, a formal dance between figuration and landscape. The colour palette is striking; it has this interplay of blues and reds which creates a feeling of tension and release. The texture is smooth, almost airbrushed, which feels very contemporary. It’s as if the artist is deliberately obscuring the trace of his own hand. This contributes to the dreamlike quality of the image. Take a look at the way Eyre uses the silhouettes of the figures to frame the landscape within. He is inverting the traditional relationship between figure and ground. It reminds me of the work of Alex Colville, another Canadian painter who explored similar themes of alienation and the uncanny. Ultimately, this is what keeps me coming back to Eyre's work: he embraces ambiguity, letting the image resonate in multiple ways, rather than pinning it down to one fixed meaning.