Contemplation

Contemplation, a 1987 R.C. Gorman oil pastel, returns to the artist’s iconic seated nude figure, a Navajo woman with long flowing hair tilting her head back, her hands resting on a raised knee. Worked directly on the paper in oil pastel rather than as an edition print, this piece reads as an intimate studio version of the same composition, Gorman’s confident black contour lines describing the figure while a dense hatched shadow anchors her head and shoulders against a warm ivory field. The handworked pastel surface lends the drapery and hair a more tactile, drawn quality than the lithograph states. A must-have acquisition for collectors of Gorman originals, Southwest fine art, and Native American figurative work.