BRENDA GOODMAN
B. 1943
Spanning a career of over 50 years, Brenda Goodman has relentlessly explored the physical and psychological limits of abstraction and figuration. Regarded as a “painter’s painter” for her inventive handling of paint, Goodman’s paintings range from thick impasto to thin veils of color, creating deeply interior spaces of personal confrontation and reflection. Between 1994 and 2007, Goodman created a series of self-portraits which critic John Yau called "one of the most powerful and disturbing achievements of portraiture in modern art." The series combines her expressionist tendencies with figuration to reveal the innate vulnerability and power within one’s own mortality. Goodman's current work reflects an expanded exploration of the potentials of abstract figuration. Incised marks on the surface, new ways of organizing space, and imaginative uses of color create a new clarity of vision. The paintings invite the viewer into Goodman’s imagination, forming deeper visual narratives within the versatile materiality of paint.
Brenda Goodman was born in 1943, in Detroit, Michigan. She received her BFA from the College for Creative Studies, from which she also received an honorary doctorate in 2017. Goodman’s career began as a member of the Cass Corridor Movement in the 1960s, before moving to New York in 1976. In 2015, a 50-year retrospective of her work was presented at the Center for Creative Studies and Paul Kotula Projects, Michigan. That same year, her work was included in the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual invitational where she received the Award in Art. Her work is included in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, among others.
Goodman lives and works in Pine Hill, New York.