Un Jour L'amour Nous Blesse

Lee R. Chesney

The title of this dramatic and, to some, disturbing image translates roughly to "One Day Our Love Hurts."

This is an early example of Chesney's work in intaglio, done in 1950 while at the University of Iowa. Chesney was one of Mauricio Lasansky's first students after Lasansky came to the University of Iowa from Atelier 17 in New York. Chesney later went to New York to study there first-hand.

Chesney experiments with a surrealistic figure, a woman giving birth, perhaps an earth mother, a goddess or a monster, depending on the viewer's personal insight. Her face and arms turn skyward in a scream. The child, visible in her abdomen, starts to enter the birth canal.

The image is done using open-bite etching, aquatint, gaufrage and selective wiping to achieve an almost three dimensional figure and surround.