Two, ca. 1990: Untitled (two figures in service)
Marker and paint on paper
10" x 16" (image)
"The Flying Dutchman"
Ink on paper
12" x 8" (image)

Though self-taught, Malcolm McKesson was a Harvard graduate from a wealthy New York City family. In 1961 he withdrew from his business and social life and, for the next forty-eight years, devoted himself slavishly to his wife, the poet Madelaine Mason, and to art. In the seclusion of their apartment he produced thousands of shadowy pen and ink drawings, sculpting with a multitude of voluminous lines the powerful women he longed to serve. He revealed the existence of his drawings only after his wife’s death when he was well into his eighties, by introducing his work to several exhibiting dealers at the 1993 Outsider Art Fair. The deeper subject of his drawings became clear when he published a semi-autobiographical erotic novella entitled Matriarchy: Freedom in Bondage. McKesson described it as a fictional yet idealized version of his lifetime struggle to define himself. “This is therapeutic for me. I want to rediscover the female in the man - a fantasy with a happy ending”. His story, secret for fifty years, met with a receptive public. His work is now in major private and museum collections, including The American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD; Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland; and The Museum of Everything, London, England.

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