Richard Mayhew, Watercolor, exhibition view. Courtesy of Venus Over Manhattan
Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Richard Mayhew: Watercolor, the first exhibition in over two decades dedicated exclusively to the artist’s remarkable work in watercolor, and the first presentation of Mayhew’s work since his passing in September at the age of 100.
Opening on Thursday, November 7th, the show features some twenty-five works spanning the last thirty years of his practice, including several created expressly for this exhibition, and many that have never before been publicly exhibited. The exhibition showcases Mayhew’s enduring vision across a notoriously challenging medium. Richard Mayhew: Watercolor will remain on view at 39 Great Jones Street through Saturday, January 18th.
The exhibition builds upon the gallery’s 2023 presentation, Richard Mayhew: Natural order, by shifting the focus exclusively to watercolor—an under-known yet deeply significant aspect of Mayhew’s practice. Known for his atmospheric “mindscapes”, Mayhew’s work in watercolor reveals the same nuanced sensitivity to color and form that characterizes his broader practice and highlights the unique qualities of the medium itself. Richard Mayhew: Watercolor underscores the breadth of his creative evolution, showcasing never-before-seen works and demonstrating how, even late in life, Mayhew continued to push the boundaries of his art.
Richard Mayhew: Watercolor offers a rare and intimate look at the depth of Mayhew’s practice, highlighting his ability to synthesize personal narrative, cultural heritage, and formal experimentation. “We are honored to have worked closely with Richard and his family on this exhibition,” said Adam Lindemann, founder of Venus Over Manhattan. “The works on view reflect not only his mastery of watercolor but also his enduring legacy as one of the great artists of our time”.
In both an art historical and cultural context, Mayhew’s work embodies a profound political dimension. As the last surviving member of the Spiral group—a collective of African American artists including Norman Lewis, Romare Bearden, and Emma Amos, who came together to in 1963 discuss their relationship to the civil rights movement and the shifting landscape of American art, culture, and politics—Mayhew’s landscapes stand as meditations on land, heritage, and belonging. His dual heritage as African American and Native American informed his approach to landscape painting, as he often referred to his work as a statement on the unfulfilled promises of land to freed slaves and the broken treaties with Native American nations. His landscapes, he once said, were his way of “painting my forty acres,” a symbolic reclamation of space and identity.
The works in Richard Mayhew: Watercolor span from 1990 to 2024, a period largely corresponding to Mayhew’s years living in California after his retirement from Pennsylvania State University. Watercolor, which had been part of his practice early on—encouraged and influenced by his first wife, Dorothy Zuccarini—reemerged as a key part of his practice following his move West. This exhibition highlights the stylistic range of these watercolors, which oscillate between abstraction and representation, each imbued with the spiritual and emotional depth that defined his career.
Ranging from vivid landscapes to compositions that verge on pure abstraction, Mayhew’s watercolors evoke the textures and emotions of memory rather than literal depictions of place. His bold use of saturated color—sometimes naturalistic, sometimes surreal—invites viewers into a world where landscapes pulse with life. Trees, geological forms, and horizons emerge and dissolve, as though the viewer is experiencing nature through a dream. These works, created from feeling and memory rather than direct observation, are as much about Mayhew’s emotional connection to the land as they are about its visual representation.
Mayhew’s work in watercolor was not only a continuation of his deep connection to nature but also a site of material experimentation. After moving to the West Coast, he often employed water from the Pacific Ocean, rich in salt and sediment, to wet the paper before applying his pigments. Occasionally, he would sprinkle table salt directly onto wet pigment, allowing the natural properties of salt to create complex stippled patterns as it absorbed the water—resulting in richly textured surfaces. In some compositions, he integrated colored pastel into the dry pigment, a technique infrequently explored in the history of art but famously employed by Edgar Degas. Through these methods, Mayhew’s works became more than representations of the landscape; they became an index of the land itself, physically incorporating its elements into his compositions.
Mayhew’s work exists within a broad continuum of landscape painters, drawing from the influences of his early mentors and extending into his dialogues with contemporary abstraction. His admiration for artists such as George Inness and J.M.W. Turner—whose seascapes and evocative use of color deeply informed his practice—can be felt in the atmospheric quality of his watercolors. These works also resonate with his peers, including Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam, and Beauford Delaney, whose vibrant palettes and abstract explorations paralleled and informed his own.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the gallery will publish a fully illustrated catalogue featuring a newly commissioned essay by acclaimed author Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, whose book Harlem Is Nowhere was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The catalogue will also debut a comprehensive biographical timeline, chronicling his extraordinary career and lasting impact on American art.
