Plate 11 1940 - 1943

This print by Louie H. Ewing features a bright palette and bold geometric forms, resembling woven textiles. The patterns are so evenly distributed. I find it very balanced. It looks like it might have been a painstaking endeavor to map out all the individual marks within the zigzags, crosses, and vertical rows of triangles! The artist might have been thinking about how to translate textile-based patterns into a very different medium of printmaking. There’s a clear emphasis on the surface through the texture and color - there’s something so enticing about the boldness of the red combined with the contrasting blue and white. Paintings are also conversations and exchanges. Looking at this piece, I think about artists like Anni Albers, whose weaving similarly explored the relationship between color, form, and material. Ewing, like Albers, created an embodied expression, embracing the ambiguity of pattern and form, which can evoke a multitude of associations.