Michael C. Spafford, one of the most respected and admired painters in
the Northwest, has created a cohesive body of work of rare intelligence
and power. Now professor emeritus at the University of Washington School
of Art, he began teaching in 1963 and was an influential and provocative
teacher. Spafford remains an active painter who has never shied away
from bold, often brutal universal themes. The rigorous physicality and
formal invention inherent in his work enhance the viewer's visual
understanding as well as the potency of the image.
Widely exhibited, awarded, and collected, Spafford is best known for his
fascination with myths of origin and heroic endeavor. His paintings,
drawings, prints, and murals depict vivid episodes from epic poems and
Greco-Roman mythology: "Leda and the Swan," The Iliad and The Odyssey,
"The Twelve Labors of Heracles," to mention a few. Many of these
narratives were revisited by Spafford over time in different formats in
search of a better visual vignette. He strips these well-known
narratives to their most emblematic elements, depicting them in a
radically abstracted form, which illuminates these stories in a direct
and visually affecting way. This book, the first monograph devoted to
the artist, seeks to glimpse the breadth of Spafford's explorations.
