Kings of the Earth 1961

Harold Emerson Keeler made Kings of the Earth sometime in the mid-20th century. The piece is built up through many dark marks and a palette of greens and blacks. I see a world emerging, shifting and dissolving. You can tell Keeler isn’t trying to impress anyone; the work is guileless, and searching. I imagine him in his studio, thinking about…what? The state of the world? His place within it? The splotches of green seem to hover, like figures in a dream. Other marks are more definite, and suggest bodies. The materiality of the ink is interesting, you can almost feel the press pushing it into the paper, marking and staining the fibres. The piece feels related to others of its time, like the paintings of Marsden Hartley or Milton Avery. But Keeler’s got his own thing going on, a kind of folk-art mysticism. His figures are a little spooky, like they’re about to disappear, and the title, Kings of the Earth, adds to the mystery. Artists are in an ongoing conversation with each other, across time. We all have our say, and then it's up to you to make up your own mind!