Barbara Whitehead is one of the few artists in Texas who regularly 
work in woodcuts and linoleum prints. This book showcases the 
best of her work.

    Whitehead began her career as an illustrator in 1969 for Bill 
Wittliff's Encino Press. Her work soon became widely known 
among collectors and lovers of fine printing. With her late 
husband, Fred, she established Whitehead & Whitehead 
Publishing Services, providing book and poster illustrations as well 
as book production and design. Such Austin-area book printers as 
David Lindsey, Thomas W. Taylor, and David Holman, and 
university presses at TCU, SMU, the University of New Mexico, 
the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas, and others 
used their designs.

    Barbara Whitehead's work has a boldness and assertiveness 
about it that is peculiarly Texan, even when her subject matter is 
not Texas. Among her favorite projects are Growing Up in Texas, 
a collection of reminiscences, David L. Lindsey's The Wonderful 
Chirrionera and Other Tales from Mexican Folklore, and R. G. 
Vliet's long poem, Clem Maverick: The Life and Death of a Country 
Singer. After research, she says, "I go off in another world 
somewhere and concentrate on the subject I'm working on, and 
while I'm driving off to the grocery store or something it comes to me."

    The Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University–
San Marcos houses the Fred and Barbara Whitehead Collection, 
donated by the Whiteheads and Bill and Sally Wittliff. The 
collection contains posters, woodblocks and woodblock and 
linoleum prints, and work from Encino Press. A member of the 
Texas Institute of Letters, Barbara Whitehead is a three-time 
winner of TIL's design award.

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BARBARA MATHEWS WHITEHEAD earned a BFA from the 
University of Texas and spent a year at the Academia della Bella 
Arte in Rome. In 1964 she entered graduate school, where she 
studied under Kim Taylor in the UT book arts program.

     Today, Barbara Whitehead makes her home in Austin and 
Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and continues to work for university 
presses as well as on individual projects.