RICHARD MAYHEW: TRANSCENDENCE

march 1 — March 27, 2021

Lois and David Stulberg Gallery

1188 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. way

“When I start painting, I just smear paint on the canvas for no reason at all. It just gets me started. After I do that, a certain feeling starts to take place and I go with it. So, there’s no planning in the beginning… it happens on the canvas. It’s that moment of truth.”

— Richard Mayhew

Nationally recognized and known for his spectacularly colored landscape paintings, this survey exhibition celebrates the publication of Mayhew’s first monograph. His vibrant, depictions of what he called his “spiritual interior landscape” subtly explore African American identity, jazz music, and abstract expressionism. “Landscape has no space, no identity,” he once said.

In the 1960s, he was one of the founding members of the Black painters’ collective called “Spiral,” which explored aesthetics in African American art and the role of art as a tool in the Civil Rights Movement. The collective included other luminaries like Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff.