Awakening 1981

Eyvind Earle made this, "Awakening" and the way he lays down these delicate lines, it’s so thoughtful, so deliberate – it makes you think about artmaking as a real process, a journey, not just a finished product. Check out the texture of the woman's hair – it’s almost like he’s using each strand to explore a slightly different shade, a slightly different emotion. It’s all so thin, so transparent, but when you step back, it all comes together, and she becomes a whole. There's this one spot, right where the hair meets the shoulder, where the black kind of melts into this shadowy blue. It's like a little secret, a hidden depth. It reminds me of some of Klimt's more ethereal portraits, that sense of art as this ongoing conversation, always borrowing, always riffing, always making something new out of the old. And that’s the beauty of art, right? It’s never just one thing, never just one answer. It’s an open question.