Ricco/ Maresca Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of recent works by African-American, outsider artist, Donald Mitchell.  Mitchell was born in San Francisco, California in 1951 and has lived with his family in the Bayview/ Hunters Point district all of his life.  He is the third of 11 siblings and has always enjoyed and benefited from the support of his large family as well as friends in the community where he is a familiar resident.

Donald’s personality has always been shy and retiring.  His speech is the softest whisper, and he often must be asked to repeat himself to be understood.  Donald has spent time in the state hospital system in California and seems confused and disturbed by hallucinatory voices from time to time.

Donald has been a studio artist at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland since 1976.  Donalds’s early work consisted primarily of obsessively crosshatched fields of lines or brush strokes that obliterated the ground and hid the underlying image.  He always started with a small face or figure but eventually filled in the field so that these entities were shrouded and lost.  Donald has always enjoyed drawing and music and in addition to his artwork he has composed a number of “Blues” songs that he will occasionally perform if asked.

A few years ago a change began in Donald’s responsiveness to his environment and an accompanying change in his artwork.  Beginning in small sections of each piece of art, Donald started to uncover the faces and forms buried in the darkness.  Soon the work began to be filled by dancing figures, one by one, until the pages are covered with sometimes dozens of mysterious creatures.  Today his fundamental imagery remains the same- legions of small figures marching across the now illuminated field of his vision.