Snowy Mountain 1940

Eyvind Earle gave us this watercolor painting of a Snowy Mountain, and it feels like he understood that artmaking is a process of layering and seeing. The surface of this painting looks smooth, but it's also got this cool tension in the way the colors are applied. The blue is subtle, like it's barely there, but it's doing so much work to create depth and atmosphere. I'm particularly drawn to the little details of the trees, how they dot the mountainside. It's like a playful conversation happening between the artist and the landscape. Earle's got this thing for landscapes, and you can see it in his later work too. It reminds me a bit of Agnes Martin's quiet, meditative paintings. Just like with her work, Earle shows us that there's no one way to interpret a landscape. It's about letting the ambiguity and multiple interpretations sink in.