Bob Rohm (1948-2024)
Passing of a Master
I am late in writing this, but I didn't know until just recently.
A couple of months ago, I reached out to Bob Rohm, whom I've now known for over 20 years, to see how he's doing. His wife responded that, sadly, Bob had passed away a year ago. He was my first instructor, and he later became mentor and friend.
Hailing from Pennsylvania, Bob was a painter first and a videographer second. He’d studied at the York Academy of Art and later moved to Texas to start a small videography company. (He and his son shot and edited many of his early instructional videos.) I think he started teaching plein air painting not long before I took my first workshop with him, which was at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.
In 2002, I’d just started to get back into painting, and I was working in pastel, when I heard about his workshop in O’Keeffe Country. I’d read about him in Pastel Journal and saw his ad there. Ghost Ranch, I knew, was a beautiful part of the high desert, and I thought it would be exciting to paint it under his tutelage. So I signed up and in October, I drove up in my Honda CRV.
At the time, lodging at Ghost Ranch wasn't fancy as it is today. It was dorm-style living with shared quarters—think of something rustic, like a bunk house. I was lucky that I was the only male who'd signed up, so by default, I had a private room. I remember a screen door slamming somewhere most of the night as people came and went. (Bob stayed in his peaceful Casita trailer at the campground—lucky him!) And the food, though nourishing, was most uninspiring. But the scenery more than made up for it. One day, we drove out on the forest road that follows the Chama River—we drove all 13 miles of bumpy, washboardy gravel—where the cottonwoods edged the river with a golden incandescence, and every turn in the road presented a made-for-prime-time landscape. I did a lot of bad painting that week, but I learned much.
Over the years, Ghost Ranch became one of Bob's very favorite places to paint, and he made sure to schedule his week so his friend and my later mentor, Ann Templeton, who also loved Ghost Ranch, would be teaching there, too. The two workshops sometimes interacted in the evenings with joint critiques—a value-added experience.
Bob also loved painting in Colorado, especially in the San Juan Mountains, near Ouray and Telluride. His specialty was aspens, especially ones he depicted in autumn scenes. "I built a career painting aspens," he told me once. One fall, when Trina and I were up in Ouray camping, I was lucky enough to discover him there, hard at work. I spent a day with him, painting aspens in the ghost town of Ironton.
Over the years, our paths would intersect. I took another workshop with him a few years later, in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. After class one day, Trina and I invited him over for dinner at the little cottage we'd rented for the week, and I got to know him better. Despite our friendship, he always told the blunt truth when critiquing my work; once, he came to my easel, studied the painting on it, and said: “At this point in your career, you should know better than to use so much white.” He was right, of course.
In 2003, I interviewed him for a feature for American Artist. Later, in 2007, he asked if I'd help him with a book. We interviewed by phone and emailed back and forth for some time, fine-tuning the book, which became The Painterly Approach. It's a great book with lots of good information in it for both novices and experienced painters.
Many years have passed since then, and although we communicated off and on, I eventually lost track of him.
Then came the response to my email, letting me know that he had passed away from cancer in May, 2024, over a year ago.
The news saddened me greatly. I'd really wanted to talk to him again to see how he was doing, what project he was working on—but it was too late.
If you live long enough, you'll see your mentors come and go. If you have a mentor, make sure you reach out!
Very nice tribute. Beautiful paintings and descriptions of the places you both painted. Very sorry for the loss of your mentor. Wise words- to reach out.
A moving tribute. Thanks for letting us know.