January 22, 2010 by Maureen Davidson

Wind carries a fog of red dust over a path in a large meadow, smudging the soft green of the grassy horizon; late day shadows of violet and crimson glisten under shallow waters that become vivid reflections of a cerulean sky; a solitary tree is immolated in sunset light: The paintings of Richard Mayhew are not plein air portraits of places in nature, but a summoning of its mystery. Electric, haunting, they’ve been called transcendental landscapes and Mayhew for decades has been recognized as one of the greatest living landscape painters. I met him just hours after he was notified of his election to the National Academy of Arts & Letters, considered the highest artistic recognition in the United States. We sat surrounded by his 2009 paintings at the Art Forum gallery atop the Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz where the exhibit, After the Rain, is one of three concurrent Bay Area museum exhibitions that share a retrospective of his work. “All the honors are very humbling,” he said. “This is my art form, my selfish indulgent joy.”

“I paint from the inside out,” he said, “sensitivity to nature while living the experience of the painting. I have no intention, no plan.”  He does not sketch nor photograph scenery. His paintings may spring from a theme from classical music and a curious pattern on the concrete floor, inspired by jazz and the color theories of the Fauves and the impressionists, the energy of abstract expressionism and the reverence for nature of the Hudson River School, each Mayhew painting is unmistakably his own and abstract in its origins. “Shapes and patterns create the illusion of time, space. Optic phenomenon predicts how the mind engages with what the light shows. Reds advance; cool colors recede: there’s much to play with in that mesmerizing illusion, along with mood, life experience, and a deep feeling for nature and mystery.”

His Elkhorn Slough" brings the viewer into the painting from a foreground of emergent crimson and violet, melding into a quieter center where vivid ponds of light-reflecting blue float out of a voluminous field of mossy green edged with cadmium, then the eye is drawn deeper still toward a horizon of periwinkle haze disappearing into foggy blue. The contrast of softness and reflectivity, the watery haze, the life-filled quietness of the place feel like Elkhorn Slough, yet there is no place like this.
 
Now living in Aptos, he was born in 1924 in Amityville, Long Island, his upbringing instilled deep sensitivity to nature. “My mother’s family is Cherokee and African American, father was Shinnecock and African American.” In those days, Native American culture was “so ostracized and oppressed” that he found it easier to identify with his African American heritage, “an accepted identity.” Only later did he fully embrace his Native American heritage.

He knew as a boy he would be an artist. At 23 he worked as portrait painter and medical illustrator in New York, singing in jazz clubs by night. He sings a few bars of a ballad in a voice still resonant and tuneful.  “As a singer, you’re a puppet; as painter you have complete control… you get the applause later, or never at all.” 

New York in the 50’s was a hotbed of abstract expressionism; Mayhew stayed on the fringes. In 1958 he received a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony followed by fellowships to study in Italy and later throughout Europe.  He returned in 1962 to a U.S. embroiled in the civil rights struggle and in 1963 with Romare Bearden founded Spiral, a group of prominent African American artists who wanted to contribute to civil rights.

Increasingly recognized, exhibited and collected, Mayhew began to teach. First at the Brooklyn Museum then the Art Students League then in the 70’s at San Jose State, Sonoma State, Hayward, UC Santa Cruz and created an interdisciplinary program at Penn State, teaching the creative process itself. He involved engineers and scientists as well as dancers, musicians and visual artists. He smiles at the thought of musicians playing a geodesic dome as if it were a horn, much to the amusement of Buckminster Fuller.

From 1976 to 1978 he worked to establish the “Center for Experimental Arts and Sciences” as an international center for innovative and creative thinking at Fork Baker in the Marin Headlands. The effort failed, but no doubt helped clear a way for later development of the Headlands Art Center. 

Now the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco shows his early works; the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University exhibits works from the 1970s to the present and MAH shows works of this year.

 “Nature changes moods, constantly refreshes itself. The light moves every 20 minutes, a different cycle.”  He cups his hand into a tight arrow pointing toward his face, then opens it away from himself, fingers spreading into a flat fan, “in the morning a leaf is like this, then all day it works its way toward that. The story’s all there—nature’s cycle of growth and development.” 

Richard Mayhew: After the Rain continues through November 22, 2009 at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History @ the McPherson Center, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz. 428-1964. 

NOTE:  A version of this article appeared in the November 11, 2009 issue of Santa Cruz Weekly.