A “second-generation” member of the Northwest School, Richard Gilkey was known for his rugged, straightforward approach to painting the lush landscape of the Skagit Valley. Skunk cabbage, marshes, snaking rivers and night skies were depicted with muscular strokes of paint applied with pallet knives as well as brushes.

Inspired by the mystic philosophy of elder Northwest School artist Morris Graves, Mark Tobey, and Guy Anderson Gilkey sought to capture “universal aspects of reality and consciousness through light and form.”

Born in Bellingham, WA in 1925, Richard Gilkey grew up in the Skagit Valley and enlisted in the Marine Corps at the age of 17. Discharged in 1944, he worked a succession of jobs, eventually opening an artist’s studio in Seattle’s Skid Row area.

He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for travel and study abroad in 1958 and had a one-person exhibition at Seattle Art Museum in 1960. He showed with the Foster/White Gallery in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A serious car accident in 1984 interrupted the artist’s work for 3 years. The artist was awarded the grand prize in the Osaka Triennale 1990 Exhibition.

After a lung cancer diagnosis in 1997, the artist died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Jackson Hole, WY, at the age of 72.

His work is in the collection of many museums and institutions.