GL Richardson is a figurative oil painter based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. By his own account, becoming one was a ridiculous decision — delusional, even. He'd left a career in San Francisco, spent over a year working on the Monte Prieto Ranch in New Mexico, and then walked away from all that to paint. "You need to need it," he says of the choice to become an artist. "It's better to have people telling you not to." Through luck, happenstance, and the generosity of some wise folks, as he puts it, things are working out for GL.
His influences are painters who found something unsettling in the American landscape — in its light, its loneliness, its myth — Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Fritz Scholder. What draws him outside, and specifically to the American West, is harder to pin down. He describes it the way most people describe looking up at a clear night sky: the scale humbles you. His subjects live outdoors, in the wide open, in the West — anonymous figures in landscapes that stretch well beyond the frame. Intimate moments set against something much larger.
On the Monte Prieto, Richardson's days were shaped by the unglamorous: checking water lines, moving herds, mending fences. He made very few paintings during that time. He was learning to look. When he returned to the canvas, he brought his education from the ranch with him.
Richardson has been wearing Best Made since 2012, including his Standard T-shirt, which he proudly still wears, with all the holes, frays, and the hundreds of washes. We're proud to feature GL and his work. Most of what’s pictured here will be showing at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, NM this April.
Photography by Brad Trone
