RICHARD THOMPSON
1945 - 2021
We are extremely saddened to share the news that our very dear friend and passionately talented artist, Richard Thompson, passed away a few days ago. Richard had been diagnosed with stage four glioblastoma this past April. He fought valiantly, with the loving help of his wife Kymberli, and family and friends at their home in Dayton, Oregon. Richard had longed to get back to New Mexico, where he had attended the University of New Mexico, earning his BA and MFA there and where he most felt 'at home', and it was there where he passed away.
Richard served for thirteen years as a professor of art at the University of Texas Austin, then as professor of painting and dean of the School of Art & Design at Alfred University in New York from 1997 to 2009. From there, he retired and moved back to his home state of Oregon, back to the family farm in the center of the Willamette Valley.
Thompson's work has been featured in notable publications throughout his career, among them Art in America, Artforum, ARTNews, the Paris Review, the Village Voice, and inclusion in the coffee-table book, 50 Texas Artists by Annette Carlozzi.
Richard Thompson has exhibited in the Whitney Biennial on two occasions. Over the subsequent five decades, Thompson has exhibited his work consistently and broadly, appearing in dozens of solo and group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, Albuquerque, Denver, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland (Oregon), and Santa Fe, to name a few, and internationally, in Australia, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, and the Netherlands.
Thompson's work can be found in many public and private collections. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth recently added two large oil paintings to their permanent collection and the City of Salem (Oregon) recently purchased a large painting for their Convention Center. Additional collections include existing works in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. Corporations housing his work include the Standard Oil Corporation in Chicago, the Sprint Corporation in Kansas City, Apple Computer in Austin, and the Fidelity Corporation in Fort Worth.
Most recently, Thompson was invited to participate in Portland, Oregon's 2014 Biennial, using his work on a monumental billboard to publicize the exhibition. Patchwork Prairies, a one-person exhibition of Thompson's recent paintings and works on paper, opened at the Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell, Montana, in February 2020.
William Campbell Contemporary Art was honored to represent Richard Thompson's artwork for forty years and to count him as a close friend. His big smile, companionship, encouragement, and ever-present support were always welcomed. We will forever appreciate and revere him as a friend and part of our family! We celebrate the years we had with Richard and mourn his passing.
Besides his family, Richard loved nothing more than painting and fly fishing, the rainbow trout often being the subject of his work, before turning to the landscape. We hope he is out on some river now, casting for rainbow trout!
Pam & Bill Campbell
