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The subjects of Earl's work are taken directly from his observations of nature. However, it is not merely faithful representation that interests him. Earl is most drawn to the formal aspects of painting. He approaches his work by first creating a sense of order within his compositions and then works on that frame with "chaotic" expressive tools; loose brush work, arbitrary color, unique mark making, drips, tears, scratches, layers of translucent and opaque wax, and sometimes handwriting. He states, "I use the broad range of palettes in the visible world of my native New England to serve as a metaphor for the full range of my own internal states." Earl describes the chaos and complexity of mark making and brush work over a stable composition as a metaphor for the play of Euclidian and fractal geometry in the physical world, and the ebb and flow of systems between chaos and order. The results are pieces with extraordinary depth in layering yet a lively immediacy in surface texture, light, sheen and color usage that begs one to look more closely.
Earl's work is encaustic, with the surface qualities being so important to the total affect of the work. There is no better alternative than to see Earl's work in person. When viewing the work one is immediately struck by the fact that Earl indeed creates with wax. The "symbolism" or conceptualization in his work is in the construction of the painting itself, in what he describes as the "how" of the work more than the "what". He explains further, "The wax I paint with represents humans themselves. Like people and societies, the wax can be very delicate, but if cared for, can be extremely enduring. It is also eminently flexible, adaptable and capable of nearly endless variation. The layering technique I use, is a metaphor for experience, time, the passing of generations. Tears into the painting are 'wounds', imperfections that makes us strong and beautiful, like the bark on an old tree, like the strength, calm and fascinating complexity of an elder person. These holes expose the past we build the present on and add richness to the final result."
In some of Earl's newer work, he has begun to explore more closely, the territory between representation and abstraction in work that is based on careful depiction of actual, nature based imagery, but yields highly formal, nearly minimalistic focus on layers and spatial ambiguity. These pieces offer a quiet counterpoint to works with more vigorously expressive mark making.
Earl has exhibited widely in the New England region in featured artist, solo, juried and invitational shows. He was an award recipient at the prestigious 2005 New Hampshire Arts Biennial. He holds a Masters in Fine Art from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, a Post-Bachelors Art Education Teaching Certificate from Westfield State College and a Bachelors in Fine Art from the Massachusetts College of Art. He is a Visual Arts Teacher at the Dublin School in Dublin, New Hampshire.
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