Artist R.C. Gorman’s house just outside of Taos blended beautifully that September day with the pink, beige and sage of the high-country desert. A few trees were turning golden and red, and his sculptures greeted our entry.
His studio was immense and luminous. A chaos of color and sensuous shapes was captured on canvases from floor to ceiling. The grand piano seemed almost small. New and nearly finished canvases were stacked against the opposite wall. In the center of the room was a large work in progress with the characteristic strong colors and simple lines that instantly identify Gorman’s work.
When the 74-year-old artist entered the room, the space suddenly felt too small for his personality. “Welcome,” he said, his booming voice filling the room.
“I was working and almost forgot you were coming. I had on an old ratty T-shirt. I just grabbed this one,” he said about his trademark Hawaiian shirt. He wore a rainbow bandana headband. “This is the first and only time this shirt has been photographed.”
While it is his “universal woman” pictures in oil and oil pastels that are the most recognizable, Gorman worked in most media: clay, bronze, marble, pen, pencil, paper casting, tile, silk screening, lithography, jewelry and weaving. “My favorites are oil pastel and drawing,” he told us as we admired his latest paintings of Navajo women. “I paint what I see, but sometimes I’ll have one woman’s foot and other’s face and another’s hand.”
Virginia Dooley, his agent and gallery manager for more than 30 years, made lunch for him at her house every Sunday and invited us to join them. We ate homemade chicken cacciatore, which Gorman’s mother taught Dooley to make. Gorman’s mother also taught Dooley how to make coffee.
“The trick is to always make it too strong,” Dooley said. “You can always dilute it later, but you can’t make it stronger. Now, she was teaching me to make cowboy coffee in a drip pot, but it works even with the most modern equipment.”
Michelle Beecher, Gorman’s niece, lived in a house on his property to help care for him since his illness in 2004. She and Gorman’s assistant of 40 years, Joseph Sparks, joined the lunch party at Dooley’s house, which is several miles from Gorman’s.
Gorman was more relaxed at lunch.
“Call me Gorman or R.C.,” he told us. “I don’t feel like a ‘Mr. Gorman.’ That was my father.”
As we lunched, it was evident that Dooley and Gorman enjoyed the comfortable, affectionate relationship that decades of deep friendship bring.
“He likes meeting new people,” Dooley said. “Having you here makes this a special event. It’s more fun for all of us.”
Marilyn Starrett is a journalism professor at Metropolitan State College. She and student Eric Drummond visited R.C. Gorman on Sept. 11, a week before he fell and returned to the hospital for the last time. He died in Albuquerque on Nov. 3.
