Don REICH

REICH, Don
Noted Sacramento artist Don Reich died Tuesday, December 7, 2010. He was 79. Don was born in Martinez and grew up there and in rural Placer County. When he was a teenager, he milked cows while listening to the Maddox Brothers and Rose, country music stars. Years later, he wrote a song that was recorded by Rose Maddox with Merle Haggard. Don was largely self-educated, but he studied at Sacramento City College with Wayne Thiebaud, who became a good friend. After his military service, Don became a full-time painter and had his first one-artist shows in the 1950s at The California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and the Dallas Museum of Fine Art. He subsequently showed in private galleries and in museums throughout the US, Europe and in Japan. He was in invitational shows with such major American artists as Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe. The Arizona State Commission on Arts and Humanities toured his work throughout the Southwest. He showed regularly at the famed Candy Store Gallery in Folsom. He was especially proud of a first-place gold medal in drawing at the State Fair. He had a major show at the Crocker Art Museum, ''Fooling the eye, fooling the mind'' in 2005 and a 50-year retrospective, ''Looking for Evidence'', at the Sacramento Temporary Contemporary Gallery earlier this year. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Crocker. Don taught at California State University, Sacramento and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was never a member of a major art movement except his own. He first gained recognition with collages and drawings in a spare, expressionist style. His work encompassed figures, Surrealist fantasies and non-objective images. The last few years of his life saw a very productive and exuberant venture into color abstraction. Don was a published poet and songwriter, a musician and a witty raconteur. He loved nature and wildlife. A lifelong traveler, he spent much time in Mexico and Europe, and he was an enthusiast of the Great American Road. Fellow Sacramento artist Jerald Silva wrote of Don this week: ''Don was always heroic to me. He was the purest artist I have ever known. He shared the most. One could look at Don's work and see into his brain. One finds his openness in virtually no other artist. And other than being a pure and real artist, he was a splendid person. He had great intelligence and sensitivity and whimsy.'' Don is survived by his cousin Deda O'Connell and friends Charles Johnson, Pat Mir, Steve Mir, Bill Petersen, Jerry Egan, Vance Dickenson, Waldo Boyd, The Rev. David and Louise Thompson, Myra Melford, Terry Meekins, Richard Hurley, LaSonja Glenn, Alex Schonberg, Rebecca Garrison, Jan Louise, Dee Oldham, Tom Neath, Jeanie Keltner, Bob and Avril Leach, and many others. His friends ask that any remembrances of Don be sent to the Crocker Art Museum.

''Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!''