Climbing Oaks 

Curator: Welcome. Today, we're examining "Climbing Oaks," a painting by Eyvind Earle. Its folk-art sensibilities are hard to ignore, but let's take a closer look at the art history this piece inhabits. Editor: Immediately, I’m pulled in. It's dreamlike, right? The sky's a lemony yellow and there's something almost aggressively peaceful about the rounded canopies. It's the kind of scene that wants to tuck you in at night. Curator: Yes, and I think it’s also important to recognize how this sort of landscape, and particularly these geometric forms, came to be coded in very specific ways in the American popular imagination in the mid-20th century. Earle did quite a lot of work for Disney, right, shaping the visuals of *Sleeping Beauty*, so the connections to broader cultural consumption are hard to dismiss. Editor: Precisely! There is a deliberate "storybook" feel, I can sense it. Also the strong linear character. That tree trunk on the right practically sings its verticality. Though it almost seems to dare you to break the spell by looking too closely. I want to fall inside the canvas and lie under one of the bushes. Curator: It's also intriguing to consider Earle's broader trajectory. Trained in the classical style but experimenting constantly, finally developing this instantly recognizable idiom. Do you think there's a yearning here to retrieve some "authentic," perhaps imagined, folk-art sensibility? Editor: Perhaps, or maybe he just discovered that paring things down is surprisingly satisfying! Think about how powerfully just a few rainbow hues poking out from the background animate the rest. Simplification became an end to itself! Almost meditation on its own. The rainbow background and a yellow background feel happy together. Curator: So we see in "Climbing Oaks" a beautiful synthesis – the folk and the fine, a painting that is historically resonant while possessing a distinctly original charm. Editor: A picture-postcard daydream we could all use a dose of, I dare say!