Richard Gutierrez was born in New York City and raised in the fishing towns of Long Island. He also lived for a time in San Francisco in the 1960s before moving to Canada – first in Toronto and then Victoria.
His long and rich life as an artist began in kindergarten, where his drawing and painting attracted attention first from his principal – he was often “on-call” to make art in other classrooms – and later his high school art teacher – who encouraged him to paint “from the inside with his feelings.” These early experiences are foundational to Gutierrez as an artist – his openness to try new styles and a variety of subjects – and as a man – as an educator and mentor of young students and artists.
As a young artist Gutierrez’s work was filled with mythical Expressionistic landscapes and he counted Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as particularly inspiring. By college, at New Paltz, NY he was being taught by the artist George Wardlaw and entered a period of Abstract Expressionism. When he returned to New York City in his twenties he was fully embracing Symbolism in his art, which continued throughout the rest of his career. During this early period, Gutierrez worked in many different media, including watercolour, oil, tempera and ink.
From the mid-1960s to the 1980s he stopped painting. During this time Gutierrez worked a variety of jobs, travelled, studied, settled into family life and began working as a special education teacher. Instead of painting his creative energies shifted to music, including studying classical guitar. But during an emotionally charged time when he and his wife Anita were facing her cancer diagnosis, he returned to painting. He created highly symbolic pictures with vibrant colours. Inspired by the materials his students were using, he began working in chalk, pastels, and pencils, materials he used for the rest of his life.
Gutierrez painted both landscapes and portraits. Inspired by locations – black urban life in New York City, the oceans and coastlines of Long Island and British Columbia, his daughter Sheleena's beloved Costa Rica – both the subject of his landscapes and his use of colour speak to these influences. Rocky shores, mountainous and hilly coasts, sailboats and crashing waves are the visual aspects that bookended Gutierrez’s life – Long Island when he was a boy and Costa Rica and British Columbia in his later years. The water is always present – as visual and textual influence.
His portraits speak to slightly different influences. He loved strong women, full in life and body, and did not shy away from their brilliance but rather embraced it. His portraits of the famous – Virginia Woolf – and the personal -- his late wife Anita, who was fiery in spirit and red hair – are examples of this rejoicing in women’s strength.
What is most profound about Gutierrez’s work is the utterly delightful and vibrant use of colour throughout. His early life was deeply troubled and painful. Foster homes, neglect and being forced to work from the age of 9 could have created a bitter darkness in Gutierrez. Instead, he was able to take the best of what he encountered – a thoughtful teacher, a book, music, his art – and channel it into an outlook of love, abundance and light. And above all else one of colour. The early agony is not devoid from his work. The off-kilter nature of his subjects, the broken planes of landscapes, the distorted bodies and undulating water as tide and storms move back and forth suggest that the fractured nature of his start in life was not so far away. But the explosive appreciation of colour, the abundant and vibrant reds, blues and greens, the joyful nature of childlike materials make that drive for beauty and happiness palpable. And become in the end the predominate feature in his work – joyful and fun.
For examples of his work, visit the galleries below.