Anasazi / Pottery c. 1935

Harold Emerson Keeler made this print, Anasazi/Pottery, with, I’m guessing, linocut, and we can see he’s really thinking about colour. The way each block is overlaid with another, a bit misaligned, allows other colours to sneak through; pinks mix with greens. It’s loose and improvisational, like jazz! There’s a real physicality in the gestures: women grinding and shaping, and a child splayed on the ground. The colours are earthy, like the clay they’re using; reds, greens, and browns, but with touches of brighter colour which catch your eye. Look at the way Keeler uses hatching and cross-hatching to create the shadows on the buildings, and on the bodies of the figures. It’s like he’s building up the image layer by layer, like pottery. Keeler's work reminds me a bit of the prints of the German Expressionist group, Die Brücke, in the way he uses bold colours and simplified forms to create a sense of emotional intensity. It’s all about suggestion and feeling, and a real sense of process, not just a finished product.