Jean Richardson signed and dated Monoprint. Hand signed and dated in pencil Richardson '88 lower right. 'Monoprint' in pencil lower left. Measures 28-in. x 43.5-in. plate size.
Richardson was born in Hollis, Oklahoma. She works in painting, printmaking and sculpture techniques. She earned her BFA degree from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, and continued study with the Art Students League in New York. Jean is listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the South and Southwest. Her work has been exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Minnesota Museum of Art, the Gilcrease Museum and the Philbrook Museum, both in Oklahoma. An Oklahoma native, Richardson has had a lifelong interest in Western "myth". Although she uses the contemporary vocabulary of modern painting, she finds deep connections to the frontier west. Selected Quotations Quotations from “Turning Toward Home: The Art of Jean Richardson”: “Her horse is a symbol for the human spirit, passionate, unbridled, resolute.” “Jean Richardson belongs to a modernist tradition that fuses the spiritual with the abstract.” “She is adamantly devoted to an art that is abstract rather than non-objective; in her painting she transforms reality rather than repudiates it. But Richardson’s reality is not that of everyday external appearances. She generates her paintings from spontaneous gestures initiated in her subconscious. Her nearly automatist expression, in which she pursues imagery that arises from her manipulation of the medium, is risky and revealing. Richardson seeks to both develop and destroy the image, to achieve a perfect suspension of form and content. This gives much of her art the feeling of a balancing act. The viewer has the sense of being on the edge of something, of trying to grasp a vision that slides in and out of focus.” Quotation from “National Gallery Guide”, December 1990 “Jean Richardson paintings seem to express to us the spirit and energy of the American West. The wild abstracted horses of her ‘Sky Herds’ are like a pageant acted out upon the grand stage of the prairie skies. Yet the subject matter is only incidental to the emotional content of these paintings, where exuberance, grace, energy, and joy are the themes woven into painterly, textured canvases. Like Fritz Scholder and Leonard Baskin there is something almost mystical in her artworks.
Books and Monographs
Turning Toward Home, The Art of Jean Richardson by Dr. Joan Carpenter
Troccoli, Denver Art Museum, published by John Szoke Graphics, New York, New York, 1998
Plains Myths and Other Tales - A catalog of Jean Richardson paintings published by John Szoke Graphics
Voices from the Heartland - Cover Artist, Biographical Essay - Fall 2007
Solo Exhibitions
John Szoke Gallery, New York, New York
Merrill-Chase Galleries, Washington, D.C., Chicago
Cogswell Gallery, Vail, Colorado
Kneeland Gallery, Sun Valley, Idaho
Ventana Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
State Capitol of Oklahoma, Governor’s Gallery
Royce Myers Gallery, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Public Collections
The Bank of Santa Fe, New Mexico
University of Oklahoma College of Law, Norman, Oklahoma
Southwestern Bell, Washington, D.C.
Phillips Petroleum Corporation, Washington, D.C.
Arthur Anderson Companies, St. Charles, Illinois
Marriott Hotels Corporation, Washington, D.C.
State Collection of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
AT&T San Ramon, California
Yellow Freight, Kansas City, Missouri
Raymond James Financial, Inc., St. Petersburg, Florida
Dean A. McGee Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
Tupperware Corporation, Orlando, Florida
TCU, Fort Worth, Texas
University of Oklahoma Health Science Center
Oklahoma City University School of Law
Jean Richardson is an artist best known for her large,
abstract paintings of horses...