Hal Mayforth

Hal Mayforth’s paintings have been featured in exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States, including the Housatonic Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut; the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles; the Sylvia Schmidt Gallery in New Orleans; Monserrat College in Beverly, Massachusetts; the Wood Gallery of the Vermont College of Fine Art in Montpelier; the Virginia Lynch Gallery in Tiverton, Rhode Island; and the Furchgott-Sourdiffe Gallery in Shelburne, Vermont. As a nationally recognized humorous illustrator, Mayforth’s work is published in national magazines and newspapers, including Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, Rolling Stone, Forbes, Outside, Road and Track, Reader’s Digest, Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe.

My Artist Statement

I set aside time every morning to draw and brainstorm in my sketchbooks, which I started in earnest in 1973. From these sessions, concepts for paintings emerge; ideas are formed by my love of petroglyphs of the Southwest, outsider and self-taught artists, sideshow banners, vintage cartoons and comics and automatic drawing. What holds these influences together is a certain off-kilter sensibility that I am told goes way back many generations in my family history.