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Richard Mayhew works from inside the painting. His unique practice blends multiple genres in the history of art including Baroque landscape, Impressionism, plein-air, Abstract Expressionism, and Color Field painting using mechanisms from each. He calls his landscapes 鈥渕oodscapes鈥� as an introspective excavation of the terrain of his mind. Mayhew鈥檚 use of color is intuitive and is alive with emotion. When his work is viewed from a distance, fields of color become fields of space and resolve as landscape. Contrary to most traditional landscape painters, he works from memory, laying down fields of abstract color on the canvas, as if in a trance. When viewed up close, we are seduced by the paint itself that ultimately reveals yet another abstract layer.

Mayhew鈥檚 African American and Native American ancestries inform his dreamlike scenes, which are saturated in vibrant colors, including shades of red and burnt earth pigments that suggest evidence of,as he puts it, 鈥渂lood in the soil.鈥� His father was African American and Shinnecock; his mother, African American and Cherokee-Lumbee. His emotional and spiritual connection to the natural world was nurtured by his paternal grandmother, who supported his art endeavors and schooled him in Native American traditions.