Five Heads

Robert Pearson McChesney

A series of cubist faces, executed in sharp, structural sepia drypoint, is a study in both design and humor by noted Bay Area printmaking pioneer Robert Pearson McChesney. Done on one plate, the faces are nonetheless individual and each tells a story. This somewhat early image is unusual for the artist whose works often leaned toward the more non-representational later in his career, yet it is the work of a fully developed artist down to its last detail, where even the direction in which he’s wiped the plate is intentional, drawing the eye horizontally across a crowd of inscrutable expressions.