Chances are good that you’ve seen color photographs by Jock McDonald in glossy magazines and any number of advertisements, from Baby Gap to haute couture: The Canadian-born, Bay Area-based artist is prized for his whimsical portraits, “situation” shots and TV ads.

An exhibition now in its final days at the di Rosa Preserve Gatehouse Gallery in Carneros offers a different view of McDonald’s recent work, with two dozen large platinum prints on acid-free artist’s paper.

The black-and-white compositions are drawn, in groups of three, from eight larger series shot in the North Bay and around the world. Close to home, the “Commuter” and “Animal” series transform a routine drive into a mysterious journey veiled with fog; a world away in a crumbling, pre-revolutionary Havana mansion, six elegant dancers rehearse, their faces stern with concentration.

McDonald’s large-format prints on heavy, hot-rolled paper reveal details that can arrest the viewer’s gaze: In the “Legacy” series, shot at a Mexican dump where trash pickers swarm the piles in a landscape of garbage, one man locks eyes with the lens as he hoists a heavy bag. The “Rural” and “Place and Gratitude” series pose riddles: Whose eyes are peering through that window? Are those dilapidated houses abandoned? Is the cat waiting for someone to come home?

McDonald first made his reputation with witty and revealing celebrity portraits, and three are displayed in the di Rosa show. An impish M.F.K. Fisher smiles delightedly at the camera, as if at a partner in mischief; Rosa Parks folds her hands and looks gravely beyond the lens, a city bus looming in the background; Robert Mondavi poses regally in a dinner jacket made from wine corks.

In the three works drawn from his “Contact Cubism” series, McDonald assembles 12 contact prints into a larger image, combining photographic detail with Cubist composition for what could be called the visual equivalent of surround-sound. Artist Andy Goldsworthy appears to be in the foreground, center and background of the same picture; a Chinese quarry worker grins as if delighted to find himself in two places at once.

McDonald, a self-taught artist whose mother was Veronica di Rosa, late wife of Rene and arts patron, has other work in the di Rosa Preserve’s permanent collection, but these 24 prints will be on view only till Saturday afternoon. No reservations are required for the lakeside Gatehouse Gallery and admission is free, so don’t wait to take the pleasant drive to Carneros; once you arrive, McDonald’s photographs will take you much further.

Jock McDonald: A Series of Series

Through Saturday

9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

di Rosa Preserve Gatehouse Gallery

5200 Carneros Highway, Napa

226-5991

Admission free