Purple Eucalyptus 1987

Eyvind Earle probably used gouache to make this landscape, which he called 'Purple Eucalyptus.' The surfaces are flat, hard-edged and simplified. The dark horizontal lines in the foreground offset the meticulous detail of the trees and shrubbery. I bet Earle had to spend a lot of time masking off areas, going back in, making corrections, and obsessing. It’s a very stylized, decorative, and modernist kind of landscape. Looking at this painting I find myself wanting to make something similarly precise, but at the same time, I want to rebel against all that control. It’s a very compelling image, and I can see the influence of someone like Arthur Dove in Earle's hard-edged planes, flatness, and simplification of natural forms. Artists are always working in relation to other artists, responding, changing, and keeping the conversation going. What would happen if I painted this, but made it more queer, more blobby, or more funky?