Richard Mayhew (American, b. 1924), Rhapsody, 2002, Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in. (121.9 x 152.4 cm), San Francisco, California, M.H. de Young Museum Collection.
Known for his vibrantly colored abstract landscapes, painter Richard Mayhew was a long-time arts educator and founding member of Spiral, an important collective of African-American artists, during the 1960s, that included Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff, among others.
Born in Amityville, New York, Mayhew experienced firsthand the complex interplay of water, earth, and sky along Long Island Sound. Of African American, Shinnecock, and Cherokee descent, Mayhew gained a deep appreciation for nature from his grandmother, who taught him Native American "nature lore, ways, and attitudes.” Rhapsody, which according to the Mayhew, “expresses the essence of nature, the unique spiritual mood of the land,” also riffs on an American Tonalist landscape tradition that remains resonant in California, where the 96-year-old artist currently lives. Mayhew’s extraordinary color harmonies, with their animated—even anthropomorphic—trees and fields, also reflect the artist’s early experiences as both an abstract expressionist painter and an improvisational jazz singer.