I want the essence of the inner soul to be on the canvas. --Richard Mayhew
The de Saisset Museum is
pleased to participate in this three-museum retrospective of the work of
Richard Mayhew. Mayhew has enjoyed a long and rewarding career, both as an
artist and educator. This exhibition consists of paintings and watercolors
executed from the late 1970s to early 1990s. During this period, Mayhew was a
professor of art at PennsylvaniaStateUniversity.
For a four-year period beginning in 1975, he would take sabbaticals from his
position in Pennsylvania and drive across the
country in order to teach at San
JoseState.
These transcontinental sojourns, sometimes via a northern route through Canada and
other times via the Southwest, provided a wealth of inspiration for his
expressionistic landscapes. They are not exact evocations of any particular
location, but rather composite impressions, based on his memories of the
various places he had visited.
Richard Mayhew, Westwood, 1977, oil on canvas, 54 x 44 in., de Saisset Museum permanent collection, Gift of Ronald R. ('70) and Gwendolyn O'Neil, 2005.5.1
Richard Mayhew was born in
Amityville, New York in 1924. He credits his Native
American ancestry (Shinnecock and Cherokee) for his love of nature. Visits to
museums in New York City
encouraged his early interest in art, and he studied at the Brooklyn Museum of
Art School, the Art Student’s League, and Pratt Institute. He earned a degree
in art history from ColumbiaUniversity. In spite of
the fact that Abstract Expressionism was the dominant art movement at the time,
Mayhew remained dedicated to rendering the landscape. He had his first solo
exhibition at the BrooklynMuseum in 1955, followed by another at the MorrisGallery.
In 1959, a Whitney Foundation Grant afforded him the opportunity to travel and
study in Europe. Seeing the work of the great
European masters had a profound effect on his use of color, leading to
experimentation with tone, space, form, and illusion.
Returning to the United States
in 1963, Mayhew was a founding member of the Spiral Group, which was formed to
foster encouragement and cooperation among African American artists in the
midst of the Civil Rights Movement. He began his career as an educator and
taught at the BrooklynMuseumArtSchool, the Art Students League, SmithCollege,
and PennsylvaniaStateUniversity,
where he was a tenured professor. Mayhew retired from teaching in 1991 and
moved to Soquel, California, where he continues to paint. His
work can be found in the permanent collections of many prestigious museums,
including the MetropolitanMuseum, the Whitney
Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
For more than forty
years, Richard Mayhew has pursued his own personal vision of the landscape,
variously described as Abstract, Impressionist, Realistic, and Romantic. A
critic for Arts Magazine said it
best:
Richard Mayhew’s landscapes are
really incredible color abstractions…stunning and unexpected.
Richard Mayhew, Untitled, 1992, oil on canvas, 22 x 30 in., Collection of Stan and Marguerite Lathan
The de Saisset Museum would like to thank Richard Mayhew, Dr. and Mrs. Rodney J. Reed, Stan and Marguerite Lathan, William and Brenda Galloway, Rosemary Gibbons-Mayhew, and Vanessa and Perry Graham for loaning art to this exhibition.
The de Saisset Museum would also like to extend gratitude to Ronald (Class of ’70) and Gwendolyn O’Neil and Richard Mayhew, who gifted works by the artists to our permanent collection.
