The Luminous Landscapes of Richard Mayhew (1924-2024) evoke a sense of spiritual transcendence. Mayhew pictured abstracted and imagined places that evince expansive meadows and watercolor vistas, often in a palette of electric color. He referred to his paintings as "mindscapes." A posthumous survey of the artist is currently on view at ACA Galleries in New York.
A Marine veteran of African American and Native American ancestry, Mayhew was born near Amityville, N.Y., and lived and worked in Santa Cruz, Calif, the last two decades of his life. He was the last living member of Spiral, the short-lived collective co-founded by Romare Bearden in New York (1963-65). Spiral was formed in the lead up to the March on Washington, bringing the group together to consider the role of the Black artist in the fight for civil rights and social justice and discuss common aesthetic challenges.
An artist and educator, Mayhew died on Sept. 26, 2024, at age 100. Weeks after his death, Venus Over Manhattan gallery in New York presented "Richard Mayhew: Watercolor." Venus Over Manhattan announced its representation of the artist in 2023. ACA Galleries worked with the artist for nearly 30 years, from 1996 to 2024. The current exhibition is the second posthumous presentation of his work.
"Richard Mayhew: A Life in Art" features 27 oil paintings and watercolor on paper works, produced between the mid 1960s and 2015. Many of the works on view are borrowed from private collections. Some are for sale, others are not. "All my paintings are based on emotion," Mayhew said in 2018. "I actually use landscape image as a metaphor for the feeling of time and illusion." CT
