{"id":2220,"date":"2025-03-20T20:34:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T20:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/20\/observer-arts-interviews-artist-catherine-goodman\/"},"modified":"2025-03-20T20:34:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T20:34:37","slug":"observer-arts-interviews-artist-catherine-goodman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/20\/observer-arts-interviews-artist-catherine-goodman\/","title":{"rendered":"Observer Arts Interviews: Artist Catherine Goodman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A look inside Catherine Goodman\u2019s studio. Photo: Damian Griffiths<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Drawing from observation is a collaboration. In the act of drawing, you are participating in a breathing landscape, the curves of a human body, the stillness of an object, the lines of a building and the nuance of color and shadow. You are absorbing the atmosphere in the interaction and, as the painter Catherine Goodman<\/a> said, \u201ccreating a portal into other realms of consciousness.\u201d Drawing is so fundamental to Goodman\u2019s practice that she started the Royal Drawing School in London with HM King Charles III in 2000. Today the school has over 3,000 students taught by seventy-five practicing artists. \u201cThe school would have twice as many students if we had the facility. Seven hundred people applied for postgraduate studies, but there was only room for thirty,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Well-regarded in the U.K. as a figurative painter in the School of London tradition, Goodman is a trustee of the National Gallery of London and has access to the museum after hours to observe and sketch. She continues to carry around a sketchbook everywhere she goes and draws constantly. At one point during our interview, she said, \u201cI\u2019m looking at you now, and I\u2019d love to draw you. I have to draw people I\u2019m interested in.\u201d The National Portrait Gallery acquired her portrait of film director Stephen Frears for its 20th Century Collection.<\/p>\n

Goodman joined Hauser & Wirth two years ago after a four-decades-long career. Thus far, she has had two exhibitions: one in L.A. this past fall and another currently on in New York, \u201cSilent Music,\u201d which features twelve large-scale abstract paintings. Observer caught up with Goodman to discuss the works in the show, her unique approach to abstraction and the artists who\u2019ve influenced her.<\/p>\n

You have Russian blood, and I can sense in these recent abstracts the cruelty and beauty of Russia. The explosive, hard strokes of red and orange over quiet portals of deep blue and turquoise. You slash and cover the quiet.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Thank you for that reflection. That feels very real to me. These things are one\u2019s voice, so deep that you\u2019re not conscious of them. They\u2019re your DNA, what made you. And culturally, I feel attuned to Eastern European paintings\u2014Soutine, Gorky, Leon Kossoff<\/a>. Leon and I were very close. We took walks together and talked. My grandmother lost her husband in the Revolution, came to London and married another Russian. They never knew when they were going home, like so many refugees today. And my grandparents never did go home. I was a child, half in a Russian world and half in a British, bohemian, less warm world. I loved the rituals and reverence for beauty in the Russian Orthodox Church. As a tiny child, the first images I saw were the big painted heads, the icons, flickering in the candlelight, bringing about the glow of gold. The mystery, a component of life that\u2019s there. I\u2019m accepting it and integrating it. England is rational, no-nonsense. I\u2019m always trying to put these two things together.<\/p>\n

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Catherine Goodman, Pahari Picnic<\/em>, 2024; Oil on linen, 78 3\/4 x 86 5\/8 x 1 5\/8 in. \u00a9 Catherine Goodman, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth \/ Photo: Eva Herzog<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You certainly do that in these abstracts. They feel like your whole body is traveling across the massive canvases, some over six feet by seven feet. The brush strokes feel like attacks over quiet pools. You must go through a lot of brushes.<\/b><\/p>\n

I use large French radiator brushes you buy in building supply stores. They use them to paint radiators. I wash them every evening. Under the abstracts are figurative images\u2014not defacing them, I hope, but painting their equivalent. I put lots of titles, playful really, on the backs. A working title at the beginning. I can work on a painting for months, going through four titles until the end. I\u2019ve often thought that my figurative paintings have nothing to do with the subject, just as my finished paintings have nothing to do with the title.<\/p>\n

You paint from films. Tell me about that.<\/b><\/p>\n

Every Monday night, many of my ex-students and I get together\u2014we\u2019re a very tight-knit community. We can stop the film at any time and paint the still for six minutes, then move on. I\u2019ve watched Malek\u2019s Days of Heaven <\/i>many times. There\u2019s a different kind of pathos, nothing artificial. I love Sam Shepard<\/a> in it, and I love his writing. I paint my secret crushes. I also love Andrei Tarkovsky<\/a>\u2019s films. The Indian writer Arundhati\u00a0Roy wrote, \u201cYou have to chase beauty to its lair.\u201d I feel that way when I\u2019m struggling with a painting, you have to chase it. You can\u2019t stop halfway there.<\/p>\n

Are abstracts new for you?<\/b><\/p>\n

Thirty years ago, in school, I painted them. I had no money; I was painting and teaching. Then I moved on to mostly figurative paintings. I taught drawing to people with disabilities. I also taught drawing to homeless people and lived with them in a homeless shelter. I\u2019ve always been involved with social justice. In 2000, I won a prestigious portrait award and kept on doing figurative paintings. Even now, under all my abstracts are figurative paintings.<\/p>\n

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An installation view of \u201cCatherine Goodman. Silent Music\u201d at Hauser &Wirth. \u00a9 Catherine Goodman, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth \/ Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A lot must have changed for you, being with Hauser & Wirth for the last two years.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s good. If they take you on, it\u2019s 100 percent. I\u2019ve passed on the Drawing School\u2014people in their forties are now running the school, and that is as it should be. I\u2019m still the Founding Director, as they call me. We\u2019re working on an interesting project right now with the faculty looking at the challenges of the next twenty years. Young people who grew up with digital media, how the screen affects them, diagnostic and philosophical. How drawing brings together the hand, mind and heart. And I\u2019m still teaching, this time with a calligrapher, using the body, how the body makes a mark. How you make marks naturally or unnaturally. Extending your vocabulary in an interesting way.<\/p>\n

How is the Drawing School doing today?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

It is thriving. There\u2019s a hunger from living an unnatural life on their phones, the unnatural images that are given to them. Students instinctively feel they need to make images rather than the images being given to them. We\u2019re all hypnotized by these unnatural things. Now it\u2019s about mental health, about attention, breathing, just sitting and observing. Drawing is our primary language.<\/p>\n

With Hauser & Wirth, is there pressure to produce?<\/b><\/p>\n

They\u2019re very respectful of their artists. It means that I can now show and sell in the States. The New York exhibit sold out. I\u2019m 64, and that\u2019s a big shift. It means I can paint all the time. I work many hours. I wake up thinking about painting. I\u2019m a bit obsessed. And I draw all the time. It\u2019s my solace. Attention and being present in the moment. A sense of wonder when you\u2019re looking deeply at something.<\/p>\n

What artists have influenced you?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019m really influenced by the big paintings of Veronese and Titian. I don\u2019t copy them. I draw from them as drawing from life. Big paintings that you can walk into. A contemplative state. I\u2019m also inspired by Baselitz and Richter. I knew the school of London painters, that was the culture I was brought up in\u2014Paula Rego<\/a>, Frank Auerbach<\/a>, Lucian Freud<\/a> and Leon Kossoff.\u00a0The Abstract Expressionist painters, of course. I love poetry and start every day with a poem. Elizabeth Bishop<\/a> and Rilke really inspired my New York abstracts.<\/p>\n

What is your next project?<\/b><\/p>\n

The project will be an exhibition at Boughton House in Northamptonshire, which has extraordinary tapestries (Mortlake and others). I\u2019m doing some large abstract paintings in response to the drawings that I\u2019ve made of the tapestries in the Great Hall there. I\u2019m also working with a tapestry studio in South Africa. The exhibition will be in the summer of 2026 at Boughton. And I will continue to meditate, read poetry and books, draw and paint every single day, entering different states of consciousness. I like to be hidden.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/b>Catherine Goodman. Silent Music<\/b><\/a>\u201d is at Hauser & Wirth, New York, through April 12, 2025.<\/b><\/p>\n

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Catherine Goodman, Lago<\/em>, 2024; Oil on linen, 70 7\/8 x 82 5\/8 x 1 5\/8 in. \u00a9 Catherine Goodman, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth \/ Photo: Eva Herzog<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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