Black History Celebration With Artist Richard Mayhew at Avram Gallery

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y., January 12, 2009 – Stony Brook Southampton’s Avram Gallery will host an extraordinary launch to February’s Black History Month with a celebration on Saturday, January 31, starting at 5 p.m. with a Black History Month Buffet presented by the Faculty Student Association; a Gallery Talk with acclaimed African-American artist Richard Maywhew at 7 p.m.; a performance by the Galilee Ensemble Gospel Choir at 7:45 p.m., and a screening of the award-winning Denzel Washington film “The Great Debaters,” about an African-American debate team that won at a Harvard competition in the 1930s, in the newly renovated Avram Theater at 8:30 p.m. 
 

Mayhew’s “Transcendental Landscapes” exhibit is on display now through March 21 in the Avram Gallery at Stony Brook Southampton, Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 to 6 p.m., and by appointment. The exhibit is curated by Prof. Marc Fasanella of Stony Brook Southampton and Mikaela Sardo-Lamarche of ACA Galleries. For further information, contact 631-632-5104.

Mayhew, considered one of the greatest living landscape painters, depicts the transcendent vistas of the American scene. His atmospheric oils and watercolors are acclaimed for their beauty, serenity and universal appeal. Born 1924 in Amityville, New York, his parents were descendants of both African Americans and Native Americans. Early on he was influenced by these rich cultures which instilled in him a lifelong reverence for nature.

He moved to New York City in 1945 and attended the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s School and the Art Students League. There he studied with Reuben Tam, Edwin Dickinson, Hans Hofmann and Max Beckmann. His first solo exhibition was at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1955. In 1958 he was awarded the John Hay Whitney Foundation Grant which enabled him to travel in Europe.

He was a founding member of Spiral, a group of African American artists which included Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff and Norman Lewis, among others. Spiral was committed to promoting civil rights in the art world and as one of the few living members of this historic group, Mayhew has achieved what the group set out to accomplish.

His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Art Institute of Chicago; IL; National Museum of American Art, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; and the De Young Museum; CA.

He is a member of the National Academy of Design and has held numerous teaching positions including Artist in Residence at the University of  

Mayhew's "Love Bush."

Pennsylvania. He has had more than thirty solo exhibitions over the last fifty years, most recently at the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah Georgia.

A retrospective exhibition will be concurrent at three venues in the Fall 2009: the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), and the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz.
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