Landscape imagery has dominated Richard Mayhew’s long career, serving as a metaphor for his emotions and as a link to his Cherokee, Shinnecock, and African American heritage.
Mayhew came out of the abstract expressionist tradition of artists who were interested not in representing the external world, but rather to find a way of expressing an interior state. Drawing from landscape traditions such as Impressionism, Tonalism, and the French Baroque, as well as Abstract Expressionism, Mayhew employs color to create evocative, immersive spaces.
A conversation with Dr. Shawnya L. Harris and Dr. Steve Zucker on Mayhew’s “Indigenous Spiritual Space,” 1993–94.
Dr. Harris is the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art at the Georgia Museum of Art.