Chews Ridge

Byron McClintock

Oregon born and now Portland resident, printmaker/painter Byron McClintock was an important part of the abstract expressionist movement in San Francisco in the 1950s.

His printmaking was re-discovered in the early 1990's by New York AbEx print collector Charles Dean. Byron began working in printmaking again, this time using color mezzotint, roulette and drypoint. The Whitney Museum purchased a few of his prints and hung them in a "Recent Acquisitions" exhibition. At Dean's urging McClintock traveled from Portland, Oregon to New York in 2004 to see his work hanging at the Whitney, his first trip to New York.

Chews Ridge is the third highest peak in the Santa Lucia Range in Los Padres National Forest in California. This mezzotint is McClintock’s visceral response to rugged terrain and his colors, burnt umber, raw sienna, black, and opaque white, combine with his lines to give the image power, drama, depth, and delicacy.

Byron McClintock was born in Klamath Falls, Oregon in 1930. In 1946, he joined the Merchant Marines, sailing throughout the Pacific. He moved to San Francisco in 1949 and enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) where he studied under Edward Corbett, Richard Diebenkorn, and James Budd Dixon. During those years he served as class monitor for Dixon’s printmaking class and printed lithographs for many of the students. In the early 1950s, McClintock tended bar at Vesuvio Café, a saloon that was an important hangout for the Beat artists, and he shared a studio in the Mission District with Ernest Briggs.

McClintock served in the U.S. Army between 1953 and 1955. After his discharge, he returned to San Francisco where he co-owned Acme Photoengraving, a photoengraving business specializing in commercial advertising work, until 1980. During the 1960s McClintock exhibited his paintings at the John Boles Gallery in San Francisco and, in the late 1970s, he purchased a large studio on Howard Street and bought a press to return to printmaking. He now resides near Portland, Oregon.