RICHARD WELLS, MORE THAN A PAINTER
June 3, 2022 - July 1, 2022
COATS OF MANY COLORS
BY ELLEN STERN, NEW YORK/FEBRUARY 25, 1980
This gentle bear of a man is Richard Wells, an artist who refinishes cars – or a mechanic who paints. Either way, he does both. He studied at the Los Angeles Art Center School, where his colleagues included many of Detroit’s eventual car designers. He himself owned cars and raced them. He loved them and fixed them. After a hapless bout with commercial art in New York, he succumbed to collision work. “I don’t have enough Porsche customers,” he says. “That’s my problem. Too many Chevrolets.” So he branched back to art – or a form of it – discovering that the spray guns he used on cars could be aimed at furniture as well. The result is radiant, smooth, and durable – like japanning. Wells has lacquered a 1939 Steinway, this table and chairs, props for photographers’ studios, and a stuffed sailfish that now looks like porcelain. He will mix any color, including metallics. “Anything you want, I can do it in a non-vulgar way – because I’m more than the painter. I’m an artist.”
