Winter

Elizabeth Colwell

American printmaker/typographer Elizabeth Colwell learned color woodcut at the Art Institute of Chicago around 1906 from B.J.O. Nordfeldt, who is credited with later introducing the white-line woodcut technique in America.

This small format color woodcut reflects the artist's interest in the Japanese sensibility that many artists turned to at the turn of the 20th century; a simple, flattened composition whose content is created by the subtle modulation of color.

Using a water-based ink Colwell used the Japanese technique of Bokashi to vary the blue sky from dark to light at the top and gray to white at the bottom. Negative spaces create a moon and stars (or snow). A black linear block describes the landscape, including a figure in the foreground. The viewer's eye (and presumably the figure's) focuses on a dot of red in the house, a welcoming heat source, that brings a context to the scene.

With this understated composition Colwell is able to create a narrative that many viewers at the time could relate to at a basic level and appreciate for its honest simplicity.