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The art of moving on: After 44 years, Roy Johnson is closing the doors of Sumner & Dene
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His 8-year-old pooch Mazie serves as the welcoming committee when the doorbell rings.
“If you’re into Yelp, they don’t talk about Roy, they talk about her,” Johnson said. “She’s got a real following.”
The gallery owner is closing the Central Avenue space after spending 44 years in the business of selling art. His clientele has included such heavy hitters as Angus Macpherson, Phil Hulebak and Bill Tondreau in an area populated by street people and lawyers. The gallery is a candy store filled with pottery, paintings, clocks, ornaments, dolls and mobiles, among other arts and crafts.
Along the way, he’s owned galleries in San Diego, Taos, Santa Fe and, finally, Albuquerque.
Johnson is retiring on Oct. 31.
“After 44 years fighting the word discount, there will be no sale,” he told a customer buying jewelry.
Johnson began selling art when he took over his father’s Taos gallery in 1979, expanding it to Santa Fe in 1984, “not knowing poop about what I was doing.”
His great-great-grandfather was one of the first cattle ranchers in the state of Oklahoma, as well as the Texas panhandle. The slight lilt in his voice reveals his Lone Star heritage.
Johnson’s father was an Oklahoma rancher until he developed an allergy to alfalfa and moved to Texas, where the family had leased land to Phillips Petroleum.
He was also a sculptor.
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“It all started because of him,” Johnson said. “I started painting at the age of 6 because I didn’t want to be the model anymore.”
He originally thought he’d start an advertising firm. His portfolio featured a model posing in a bathtub filled with Jell-O. But then the Taos gallery manager left.
“I said, ‘I’ll run the gallery until we find somebody,’ and now three or four cities later, here I am trying to get out of the fine art business.
“The secret to that is surrounding myself with really great artists. I can recognize great art.”
First, he has to like the artist.
“The first couple years I put up with some prima donnas,” he explained. “There is only one prima donna in here, and that’s me.”
Customers will find no anguished introspection or deep despair on his walls. His aesthetic leans toward the cheerful and the beautiful.
“I don’t sell paintings where you go, ‘Oh, what’s that hidden meaning?’ ” he added.
When Johnson began mixing fine art with crafts, the purists snubbed him.
“I was completely ostracized,” Johnson said. “The two were segregated. The jewelry and the pottery on the pedestals were what kept the doors open.”
He moved to Albuquerque following an epiphany while he was stuck in a California traffic jam working a crossword puzzle.
“Then the universe opened,” he said. “I came here and in 20 minutes, I found this building.”
The 3,500-square-foot building at 517 Central Ave. NW includes a “secret” upstairs gallery with a separate room devoted to the work of Macpherson. Attorneys and business people sometimes ask to walk its hardwood floor length in order to calm down surrounded by soothing paintings.
“Someone said, ‘You should charge people for going upstairs. It’s like therapy,’ ” Johnson said.
“When you take people into that room, it’s like going into an artist’s studio.”
Macpherson has known Johnson since they both worked as camp counselors in northern New Mexico in 1974.
“He’s been the best gallery representative I’ve ever had,” Macpherson said, adding he also shows his work in Santa Fe and in Houston.
“He’s very good at art sales. He knows how to do it well. Roy is extremely consistent. To be in the business for 40-some years is very rare. It’s a tough game.”
A couple who lived near Durango bought two pieces by Macpherson and told Johnson they wanted to meet the artist. Macpherson drove north to meet them. Johnson suggested taking two additional paintings.
“So we sold four paintings,” Macpherson said. “I’m so happy for him getting to retire.”
The “Sumner” in the gallery’s name refers to Johnson’s middle name. “Dene” was the middle name of his late partner, Susan.
He benefitted from the New Mexico film industry when set designers from both “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” used his gallery paintings in both series.
“If Walter White would have sold his art collection, he would not have to have been a drug dealer,” he said, adding the collection was worth from $20,000 to $30,000.
It was during the pandemic shutdown that Johnson realized there could be life after selling art. He cooked, painted and gardened. When he reopened, it was to buyers finally springing for that expensive painting they had been staring at for years. The same sales spurt happened the day after 9/11, he said.
“They were spending their vacation money,” he said, “I heard about (cancelled) trips to Paris, to London, to Chicago. It was locals. Probably 50% of them were people I’d never seen before.”
Similarly, he sold 14 paintings the day after Sept. 11.
“It made everybody know that life was precious and short. It just blew me away,” he said.
He swears the artists made the business side easy. He says he’s never been afraid of the area’s sometimes questionable residents.
Asked what he will miss, he replies, “The artists,” then tears up.
