Earle’s Paintings

My oldest brother, Earle, passed away in December 2023.

For as long as I knew him – which, for those who don’t want to do the math, is my entire life – Earle was an artist of sorts. A dabbler of creative concepts. A painter of paintings.

I don’t know much about art or artistic styles but I suppose Earle’s paintings would fall under the umbrella of ‘abstract’. I also don’t know what qualifies as good art or what is considered bad art, so I wouldn’t dare to place any of Earle’s paintings anywhere on that spectrum. I will say that the more I look at many of them, the more I seem to like them.

I’ve been cleaning out Earle’s house over the past couple of months, and have been putting aside most of his paintings. Some were in too bad a condition to keep and had to be tossed. Most of what remain are in some form of disrepair – dirty, dusty, torn, grimy, or worse. They all could use a good, gentle cleaning. They come in all sizes, from a few inches by a few more inches, to a few feet by a few more feet. Some are painted on canvas, some on other types of material, some on cardboard, and some are painted right on the walls of his house.

Other than a couple of guitars, a few odds and ends and personal mementos and possessions, a Bop-It, his paintings are all that really remain of Earle, as far as tangible things go. We all who knew him, of course, will have our memories.

I don’t know what to do with his paintings. But I thought it’d be a good idea to photograph them and post them onto the internet.

Here, then, are the paintings by Earle Bruce MacDonald: