Santa Ynez Oaks 

Curator: This piece stops you, doesn’t it? “Santa Ynez Oaks,” we think, given that the late Eyvind Earle rendered it in enamel. It has a way of holding light, like stained glass. Editor: Yes, utterly hypnotic! A bit unsettling too, almost otherworldly. Is this really about landscape, or a secret geometric code rendered in arboreal shapes? Curator: Earle had a modernist edge, didn't he? It makes total sense he favored hard-edged precision, that hyper-real simplification, in service to subjects you would least expect it to flatter. Like oak trees... Editor: Flatter, exactly. Usually, oaks, as a symbol, they’re rooted deep in ideas of strength, endurance. That gets flipped on its head a little here. The trunks look frail. What’s carrying all those enormous caps? Like dark parasols… a touch morbid, even? Curator: Morbid chic! And that gold. Almost… metallic, isn't it? As if the light is being extracted, measured out for something, but what? There's very little organic feeling at all, and everything carefully curated. Editor: That gold screams alchemy! The trees against it read like ancient glyphs – I keep coming back to the image as an encoded message of some sort, tucked into the language of familiar landscape painting. Curator: Encoded perhaps for us. I keep circling back to thinking what this must have felt like to produce; it couldn't have come together easily, such deliberateness would get tiresome. Editor: But the lasting effect is powerful. Makes you see familiar forms with new, almost fearful respect. It's one way to think about environmental anxiety, actually – like a beautiful, forbidding omen.