Sherrie McGraw by Melissa A Leffel

Sherrie McGraw was born in Oklahoma of Irish-Catholic-Cherokee descent. She is one of seven children from a family obsessed with Golf. Her father, Gerv, owned a Pro shop and many of her siblings are serious athletes or coaches. Sherrie is not a golfer but has still managed to make excellent use of the discarded golf clubs from her father’s shop.

When I first moved into Sherrie and my father’s guesthouse, I thought I had hit the jackpot. It was small, but beautiful—a sweet little adobe tucked into the mountains. Right outside my door was Sherrie’s garden, overflowing with roses, broccoli, raspberries, cucumber, tomatoes, and squash, all thriving in the merciless desert earth. I innocently mentioned to Sherrie that she was going to need a bigger garden soon. Silly me.

A few days later, Sherrie was showing me how to use a motorized push-tiller. She made it look easy, scooting around the side yard like lightning, deftly maneuvering what I considered a fairly intimidating piece of farming equipment.

“How do I know where to stop?” I asked nervously.

“Oh, I marked off the boundaries with clubs,” she told me.

“Clubs?” I cautiously ventured.

“Golf clubs. I cut the bottoms off to make stakes for the garden,” she explained.

“I see.” I started to move the tiller forward.

Two minutes later, Sherrie and I were chasing the tiller, which had decided that it didn’t like boundaries. To further clarify this, it ate two of the golf clubs, turning them into mangled pieces of metal (tiller yard art?) before heading across the road to test the boundaries of someone else’s land.

For the record, I am five foot nine inches. Sherrie is tiny. She could fit in my pocket. Against all logic, she has the strength of a bear. She retrieved the tiller from the neighbor’s yard (while it was still trucking along at an impressive clip) and finished my job. This time, the tiller stayed within its boundaries. It knew better than to try to get away when Sherrie was in charge.

Outside of the garden, there is another place where Sherrie thrives: her studio. Walking into Sherrie’s studio is like being shot straight into the heart of an artist. Vases and T’ang horses sit patiently in corners, waiting. Rolls of canvas line the walls, climbing toward the ceiling. The smell of turpentine (one that has become a part of my sensory database) envelops every corner of the room, including the centerpiece: Sherrie’s easel, which stands alone, throne-like, flanked by its guards—a palette and an empty coffee can filled with paintbrushes.

The ever-present Taos sunlight falls in muted blocks from the studio's high north windows, but, ironically, does not actually light up the space. Sherrie does that. Despite her inclination to dress entirely in black, she illuminates a room with her intensity, equal parts energy and focus. As a result, watching her paint is a lesson in paradoxes. Her body is still, but her eyes, revealingly expressive, are working, helping her mind process what exactly is happening on the canvas, or, even more accurately, what needs to be happening on the canvas. Her mind is always in gear, ready for the next step.

 When she is not painting, Sherrie is almost always in motion. She is able to multi-task at almost everything. Almost. She can cook a vegan meal for ten people while holding a focused conversation. She can paint a delicate still-life of a light pink rose bent gently over its vase while discussing the state of the world. She cannot, however, talk on the phone while doing anything else. It’s one of my favorite quirks about her. I could, quite easily, rob her blind when she is on the phone--walk out with her kitchen table. Sherrie likes live conversation. The phone messes her up—it’s a live person, but once removed. She is very real and very grounded and she likes everything around her to be that way, too.

Through her paintings, Sherrie teaches us that art is a process, just as nature is a process. While Taos is a place of great calm and beauty, it is not for the weak at heart. It takes a certain type of person to appreciate Taos, with its laissez-faire lifestyle, quirky residents, lack of natural water sources, and physical isolation. It takes someone like…Sherrie.