Michael Charles Spafford (November 6, 1935 – January 29, 2022) was an American artist known for his archetypal, figurative oil paintings drawn from Classical mythology.
[1] He was the middle of three sons of Sarah Alice Maloney and Lynn Spafford, a businessman, and grew up in Greater Los Angeles.
Spafford became interested in the Classical myths in his Latin class at Riverside High School, one of his first artworks being a drawing of the Roman underworld based on Ovid's Metamorphoses.
[1] Spafford was also interested in cartooning and was able to obtain a part-time job with an advertising agency in Riverside, California while still in high school.
[1] Here, Spafford was able to study the Mexican mural painters first-hand and was influenced by their portrayals of mythic subjects depicting powerful, often brutal imagery, their graphic, simplified forms and solid colors.
Spafford adopted his approach of taking a mythic subject, usually of Graeco-Roman origin, and working out multiple versions with strikingly graphic contrasts.
[1] Spafford argued that art is not a decorative frill, but should be considered an essential part of a public building and its design.
In 2004, Tumbling Figure – Five Stages was re-installed on a parking garage facade at 6th avenue and Jefferson Street in Seattle.
[13] Returning from Mexico City in 1969, Spafford resumed his faculty position in the University of Washington, Seattle School of Art, teaching drawing and painting until his retirement in 1993.
Seattle-based art critic Regina Hackett wrote:Michael Spafford abbreviates and freely alters the stories that interest him, ignoring the convoluted and decorative.
He is after the pause before slaughter, the moment of cataclysmic fusion … [17]Spafford and his wife, Elizabeth Sandvig, upon receiving his position at the University of Washington in Seattle, moved to the city's Montlake neighborhood.
[18] Michael Spafford died from lung cancer on January 29, 2022, at the age of 86, just days before the opening of a major solo exhibition of his work at the Russo/Lee gallery in Portland, Oregon.