Alamo Pintada 1975

Eyvind Earle’s “Alamo Pintada” is a landscape constructed with simplified forms and bold contrasts. I imagine him working methodically, building up these layers of flattened shapes one by one to create such a stylized depiction of nature. Those dark, almost cartoonish trees, each one a mass of tiny dots, must have taken so long to create, and now I’m thinking about the concentration it would take! The yellow meadow with the curvy road is so bright and cheerful in contrast to the dark shadowy trees. Look at the cattle and how they are just simple, dark blocks. It's as though everything is boiled down to its most essential form. I see a conversation with early modernist painters, like Derain, who embraced simplification. With painting, you can take the elements of the world and turn them into something entirely new, born from a place deep inside yourself. You see these conversations going back and forth throughout art history; each painter responding to those who came before, and adding something new to the mix.