About the Artist

Rudolph C. Gorman was born in 1931 on the Navajo Nation at Chinle, Arizona. As a boy, his life was very traditional, herding sheep with his maternal grandmother. He attended school on the reservation through high school. He attended Arizona State College (now Northern Arizona University). He took a break from his schooling to enlist in the U.S. Navy for four years.

Returning to NAU in 1955, he studied art and literature. Gorman studied at Mexico City College for a year on a Navajo tribal scholarship. While in Mexico, he discovered the renowned artists Zuniga, Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, whose work had a profound impact on him. Zuniga’s manner of handling the female figure was a great influence on Gorman.

R. C. and his father, noted artist and Navajo code-talker, Carl Nelson Gorman held a two-artist exhibit at the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1964 and at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona in 1965. Since then, R.C. traveled, and his work had been exhibited, all over the world. In 1968, Gorman acquired the Manchester Gallery in Taos, New Mexico and renamed it the Navajo Gallery.

A very prolific artist, R.C. Gorman has been called "Picasso of Indian artists". Best known for his sensitive and beautiful depictions of Navajo women, he passed away in 2005.

Using a combination of engraving and embossing, Ed Morgan became a master engraver depicting a variety of subjects including Native Americans, animals, birds and flowers. He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, with a father who made all of his toys by hand, many of them with Southwest motifs.

After his father's death, he lived with grandparents on a farm in northeast Missouri, and he had to travel 30 miles to school. In grade school, he began winning art competitions. He moved to Kansas City, became a professional musician, and enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute where he got a reputation for his execution of fine detail.

He then worked for nearly twelve years as an illustrator- engraver for Hallmark Cards and later with American Greeting Cards. A trip to Taos, New Mexico to pick up frozen buffalo hides changed his life, and he subsequently moved there and to engraving added jewelry making. In this regard, he describes himself as a sculptor who carves in metal and then embellishes his work with silk, which he fuses onto the paper. He hand colors his engravings with watercolor.

In Taos, an exhibition of his work was held at the Fechin Institute in May-June, 1987. He was the first living artist to have an exhibition at the Fechin Home, as opposed to the studio because Fechin's family believed Fechin would have admired Morgan's innovations.