Eyvind Earle

Eyvind Earle

Eyvind Earle

Eyvind Earle

Eyvind Earle

Eyvind Earle

In 1951 Eyvind Earle joined Walt Disney studios as an assistant background painter. Earle intrigued Disney in 1953 when he created the look of “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom” an animated short that won an Academy Award and a Cannes Film Festival Award. 

Disney kept the artist busy for the rest of decade, painting the settings for such stories as “Peter Pan”, “For Whom the Bulls Toil”, “Working for Peanuts”, “Pigs is Pigs”, “Paul Bunyan” and “Lady and the Tramp.” Earle was responsible for the styling, background and colors for the highly acclaimed movie “Sleeping Beauty” and gave the movie its magical, medieval look. He also painted the dioramas for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

After about 15 years creating animated art, Earle returned to painting full time in 1966 and kept working until the end of his life. In addition to his watercolors, oils, sculptures, drawings and scratchboards, in 1974 he began making limited edition serigraphs. 

Eyvind Earle had a totally original perception of landscape. He successfully synthesizes seemingly incongruent aspects into a singularly distinctive style: a style, which is at once mysterious, primitive, disciplined, moody and nostalgic. He captures the grandeur of simplicity of the American countryside, and represents these glimpses of the American scene with a direct lyric ardor. His landscapes are remarkable for their suggestion of distances, landmasses and weather moods. “For 70 years,” Earle wrote in 1996, “I’ve painted paintings, and I’m constantly and everlastingly overwhelmed at the stupendous infinity of Nature. Wherever I turn and look, there I see creation. Art is creating. Art is the search for truth.”