Richard Gorman
{{Short description|Canadian painter (1935–2010)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2020}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = Richard Gorman
| image =
| image_size =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Richard Borthwick Gorman
| birth_date = {{birth date|1935|12|20}}
| birth_place = Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| death_date = {{death date and age|2010|08|06|1935|12|20|mf=y}}
| death_place = Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| nationality =
| partner = Lynne Inez Carter
| field = painter, sculptor, printmaker, filmmaker, also teacher at University of Ottawa (1972–1989), and Ottawa School of Art (1971–1989)
| training = Ontario College of Art, studied with Jock Macdonald (1954–1958)
| works =
| patrons =
| awards = Canada Council Grants
| elected = Member in 1976, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
}}
Richard Borthwick Gorman {{Post-nominals|country=CAN|RCA|size=100%}} (December 20, 1935 – August 6, 2010) was a Canadian painter and printmaker. He was known for his magnetic prints which he created using ink covered ball-bearings manipulated with a magnet held behind the drawing board and for his large abstract paintings in which he broadly handled paint. In the 1960s, he also made aluminum sculptures and experimented with film.{{sfn|Wylie|1996 |p=14}}
Biography
Gorman was born and grew up in Ottawa, a city where the National Gallery of Canada with its offering of Canadian art, particularly Tom Thomson, is an inescapable presence. Gorman's first art classes were at the gallery.{{cite book|last=Murray|first=Joan|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1119146815|title=Naked Eye: Richard Gorman|date=1990|publisher=Lake Galleries|location=Toronto|oclc=1119146815}}
Gorman was recognized early as a painter of promise. Having moved to Toronto to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design, Gorman was written about by Jock Macdonald, his teacher, who said that he had the greatest promise among all the young artists he knew.{{cite book|last=Murray|first=Joan|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7868270|title=Jock Macdonald's Students|date=1981|publisher=Robert McLaughlin Gallery|location=Oshawa, Ontario|pages=22|oclc=7868270}} As a member of the Isaacs Group of artists from 1959 on, composed of artists who showed their work at the Isaacs Gallery, he was a maverick whose main interest seems to have been a search for spiritual meaning.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}} Although achieving major success as a painter, he became an early Isaacs drop-out. In 1964, he travelled to Ibiza, an island which is part of the Balearic group in Spain. In 1966, he left for London, England, only returning to Toronto in 1971.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}}
At first, his abstraction only evoked landscape references, internalized, then he turned to painting nature full scale, especially the foliage and sky around Limerick Lake area near Bancroft, where his brother John had a cabin.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}} He said that for him, the best thing about the city was the ruggedness of the nearby landscape.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}}
A retrospective exhibition of Jock Macdonald in 1981 sent him again to study nature.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}} In 1983, his memories of the work of Tom Thomson came together in a three-part Homage to Tom Thomson.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}}{{sfn|Nasgaard |2008|p=241}} He invented an alter-ego for himself: a painter named Jack Pine, who used to travel the northern rivers in a canoe painted all over in a yellow-and-black checkerboard pattern modeled on Canadian road sign painting.{{cite web |last1=Dault |first1=Gary Michael |title=It ought to be a disaster. Instead, it's a mystery |publisher=Globe and Mail, June 25, 2005|url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/it-ought-to-be-a-disaster-instead-its-a-mystery/article1331010/ |access-date=June 24, 2020}} From 1984 to 1985 he created a 30-foot mural for Ottawa's Provincial Court House, titled Before the Law.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}} Gorman said it was an image of nature near Ottawa before the explorers came. In 1986, a second 30-foot mural was commissioned for the Department of External Affairs at the Canadian embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}}
Gorman painted in watercolour as well as oil during these years, as well as making several thousand drawings of the figure because he considered figure drawing basic to his practice.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}} In 1989, he returned to Toronto, opened a studio, and returned, mostly, to abstraction.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}} In 1990, the Lake Galleries in Toronto in combination with the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa held a retrospective titled Gorman Variations: Selected Paintings by Richard Gorman, 1960-90 of 30 years of his work.{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}} In 1998, Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto held his The Orpheus Series in which Gorman used an image of a single tree he found congenial. This time it appeared as a loosely painted central icon in a dazzlingly lavish display of colour.{{cite book |title=Richard Gorman : Orpheus |date=1999 |publisher=Christopher Cutts Gallery |location=Toronto |isbn=0969654855 |url=https://library.gallery.ca/search~S1?/dgorman%2C+richard/dgorman+richard/1%2C3%2C7%2CB/frameset&FF=dgorman+richard+borthwick+++++1935+++++2010+exhibitions&1%2C%2C3 |access-date=25 July 2024}}
From 1971 and 1972 to 1989, Gorman taught part-time at the Ottawa School of Art and University of Ottawa.{{sfn|Wylie|1996|page=15}} He was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1976.{{cite web|title=Members since 1880 |url=http://www.rca-arc.ca/en/about_members/since1880.asp |publisher=Royal Canadian Academy of Arts |access-date=June 24, 2020 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110526215339/http://www.rca-arc.ca/en/about_members/since1880.asp |archive-date=May 26, 2011 }}
Selected public collections
- Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}}
- Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto{{cite book |last1=Bradfield |first1=Helen |title=Art Gallery of Ontario: the Canadian Collection Collection |date=1970 |publisher=McGraw Hill |location=Toronto |isbn=0070925046|oclc=504298518 |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/504298518 |access-date=June 24, 2020}}
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa{{Cite web|title=Richard Gorman|url=https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/richard-gorman|website=National Gallery of Canada|language=en|access-date=June 24, 2020}}
- The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa{{cite web |last1=Gorman |first1=Richard |url=https://rmg.minisisinc.com/m3online/scripts/mwimain.dll/41/1/0?SEARCH&SHOWSINGLE=Y&ERRMSG=[M3ONLINE]error.html |website=rmg.minisisinc.com|title=Works in the collection |publisher=Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa |access-date=June 24, 2020}}
- Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England{{cite web |last1=Baele |first1=Nancy |title=Spontaneity Rules |publisher=Ottawa Citizen, August 11, 2010|url=https://www.pressreader.com/canada/ottawa-citizen/20100811/284386965571528 |access-date=June 24, 2020}}{{sfn|Murray|1990|p=n.p.}}{{sfn|MacDonald |1989|p=299}}
- Shanghai Art Museum, China
References
{{reflist}}
=Bibliography=
- {{cite book |last1=MacDonald |first1=Colin |title=A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, vol.2 |date=1989|publisher=Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd.|isbn=0-919554-13-X|oclc=738932990 |edition=Third|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/738932990|access-date=May 31, 2020}}
- {{cite book |last=Nasgaard |first=Roald |title=Abstract Painting in Canada |location=Vancouver |publisher=Douglas & McIntyre |date=2008 |isbn=1-55365-394-7}}
- {{cite book |last1=Wylie |first1=Liz |title=Richard Gorman: Pure Painting |date=1996 |publisher=Ottawa Art Gallery |location=Ottawa }}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gorman, Richard}}
Category:Painters from Ontario
Category:Canadian male painters
Category:20th-century Canadian printmakers
Category:20th-century Canadian painters
Category:Canadian abstract painters
Category:20th-century Canadian male artists