Richard Mayhew in his studio
Goodbyes | Richard Mayhew
by Editorial Staff
Richard Mayhew, an American landscape painter, illustrator, and educator of Native American and African-American descent, died on September 26 at the age of 100. His abstract, colorful landscapes were influenced by his personal experiences and interest in jazz and the performing arts. He lived and worked in Soquel and Santa Cruz, California. Throughout his life, Mayhew was often identified as a landscape painter, but he would shy away from the title, correcting his interlocutors and telling them that he was actually a painter of mental landscapes. “ When I go to a canvas, I put pigment on it, and it’s suggestive, very suggestive ,” he explained in a 2019 meeting at the Getty Research Institute. “ I get involved in it with the feeling of desire, ambition, love, hate, fear, these are my paintings .”
