Size: 12" x 17"

This small watercolor evokes the feeling of a marching brass band.

Richard Yard tackles the traditionally intimate art of watercolor with uncharacteristic bravado. Unlike oil or acrylic painting, watercolor is unforgiving of mistakes. Yet Yarde paints with dazzling color and deeply evocative imagery.

Yarde has been a signal presence in the New England art world since the mid-1960s and has been a professor of art at UMass-Amherst since 1990. His work has been an exploration of his own history, from the vibrant and joyous paintings he created of the Roxbury neighborhood of his childhood in the 1950s to imagined scenes from the jazz world of the Savoy Ballroom during the Harlem Renaissance.

Yarde's donation also includes an autographed copy of "Stompin' at the Savoy," a children's book by Bebe Moore Campbell which he recently illustrated.