Richard Wilson: New Paintings
Marygrove Conservancy
8425 W. McNichols
May 6, 2025
Welcome to the most surreal night of my life, where I’m not just attending an exhibition opening but also featured in the damn show as an oil painting by one of the most technically proficient painters currently living in the city.
I first met painter Richard Wilson, fresh to Detroit via London, as he was working on a massive mural to Stevie Wonder downtown. As he worked, I asked him, “Isn’t it a little intimidating to get the likeness right of one of our greatest musicians, in the heart of the city that claims him?”
Before Richard could launch into his answer, a grown man on a BMX bike rode up and loudly asked, “hey –His that Eddie Murphy?!”
The comedic timing couldn’t have been better.
Since then, Richard has woven himself into the cultural fabric of Detroit. He’s beloved by other artists -- an artists’ artist, if you will. I’ve covered him for Midbrow before (“Richard Wilson's Sense Of Wonder Hits The Suburbs”), and I’m sure I’ll spend the rest of my life keeping up with whatever he has up his sleeve next.
In his “New Paintings” pop-up portrait party (he struggled with exactly what to call this whole ordeal), Richard returned the love he feels from the creative class by painting people he loved and cared for, from a small business owner (Jantae’ Spinks) to a singer to a radio host (me) to a world famous deejay (Waajeed) to a sign painter (Kelly Golden) to a poet (Joel Fluent Greene) to one of the only Black fresco painters in the world (Dr. Hubert Massey) to lots of folks in between.
The show itself was a “Brigadoon” of sorts, an invite-only pop-up that lasted just for a few hours on the 4th floor of Marygrove Conservancy’s Liberal Arts Building. (Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 100 years for the next one.)
In the flash of an eye, it was gone by the morning. If you weren’t there, you didn’t see it.
And speaking of eyes, in each of Richard’s portraits (some still in progress), the eyes are alive. They don’t just follow you. It’s actually hard to tell that they aren’t actual human eyes. That’s just how detailed and lifelike Richard’s work is. When I would post a photo of his portraits on Instagram, people didn’t care much. They didn’t understand that this wasn’t just a photo I was posting but a photorealistic oil painting.
Richard is building on a legacy that’s run through the veins of Detroit’s art scene for quite a while -- a city with a reputation for churning out technically skilled, realism painters across generations. It was well-documented with a 2023 exhibition at Cranbrook Art Museum called “Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit.” The show featured 20 contemporary artists from multiple generations, including Jonathan Harris (whose 2021 painting “Critical Race Theory” went viral), living icons Dr. Massey (who Richard was currently working on painting) and Richard Lewis, and stalwarts of the scene such as Sydney G. James.
The biggest difference, of course, is that Richard is white and not from Detroit. But he’s got the chops to keep up.
In the portrait of Spinks at Richard’s “New Portraits,” you feel like you can touch her cable-knit sweater. Even the finest fibers are shown in detail. The glass cases from her cafe behind her reflect the light with such detail that you feel like you’re actually standing next to her on location.
In the portrait of Freddy Diaz, another accomplished street artist known as Southwest Freddy, the shading of his glasses gently falls on his pock-marked cheeks. Each hair of his beard is perfectly in place.
And in my portrait, you can see every hair that makes up my overly bold unibrow. Thanks, Richard!
Richard painted me because he’s become a fan of my radio show. He showed up to the radio station one day, took my picture and bam -- the next thing I know, I’m an oil painting.
Which is insanely overwhelming and surreal (truly a word I’ve returned to over and over again about this show) because walking into the gallery, people were looking at me, looking back at the portrait and looking at me and saying, “that’s you!” Everyone wanted a photo.
And, in a way, I think that’s the love Richard was returning to the art scene that has shown him love. He knows there’s not much of a market for portraits in museums or more traditional gallery shows, but this was work he was compelled to create and did with an insane amount of care.
It was Waajeed, who also had a smoldering portrait featured in the show, who put in perspective for me with a single text: “Most folks who have oil painting of them are aristocrats or dead. We dun good.”
