L’aigle et la Pie 2021

Carlos Sablòn’s painting, “L’aigle et la Pie,” presents a landscape dominated by a symmetrical composition split between a warm sunset and cool, blue mountains. The texture of the paint is smooth, creating a seamless transition of colors in the sky, while the trees and mountains below are more tactile, leading us towards the balance in the painting's upper reaches. The painting’s organization can be seen as a semiotic system. The eagle, centrally located, is a signifier of freedom and perspective, while the mountains act as a solid counterpoint that implies permanence. The composition itself may destabilize traditional landscape painting, by flattening depth which encourages a symbolic reading of the image, rather than a naturalistic one. This interplay between natural beauty and constructed meaning invites ongoing interpretation. We are encouraged to engage with the artwork as a space where nature and artifice, freedom and stability, are not fixed oppositions but are always in conversation.