A memorial retrospective of forty paintings by Deborah Gooch, an influential artist and teacher who worked in Vero Beach for more than 30 years, will open with a reception at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 3 at the Center for Spiritual Care. Proceeds from sales of the paintings will go to fund a scholarship in her name granted by the Vero Beach Art Club.
Gooch passed away this summer in Taos, New Mexico. Her husband, Jim Gooch, has donated her art works to the project. “Deb very much wanted this event to take place,” he said recently. “The Art Club held a special place in her heart and the Center was one of her favorite galleries.”
Deborah Gooch was a painter with a strong sense of narrative, whether working in a representational manner or in an abstract mode. Process was important to her. She considered constructing a painting to be a form of storytelling, with the theme of the painting developing as she worked.
No matter what form the finished painting took, she would say, “here and there the earliest stratum of paint invariably peeps through the subsequent layers. In this way, the painting is a chronicle of events as well as a finished product.”
Gooch studied painting at The Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore, one of the oldest and most distinguished art schools in the country. She enjoyed a long career as an antiques dealer, specializing in 18th and 19th century American paint-decorated furniture. She assisted in the conception and production of the Annual Center for the Arts Antiques Show and was a founding member and president of Vero’s Gallery 14.
For 22 years she owned and operated Winter Beach Farm, a seasonal horse boarding facility, specializing in the “equestrian art” of dressage. The dogs, horses, and people that surrounded her in this environment provided a constant source of inspiration for her paintings. She taught intermediate and advanced classes and workshops at the Vero Beach Museum of Art for four years.
The memorial retrospective will run through December 29 at the Center, which is located at 1550 24th St, at the northeast corner of 16th Avenue and 24th St., in Vero Beach.
