Brenda Goodman

Loss, 2009

Self Portrait 2, 1994

Here are two excerpts from a great interview of Brenda Goodman by David Brody on artcritical. Her view of the world communicated through her work is different than mine but her work is so felt that it makes me realize 1. not to be so fearful and 2. how incredibly far I have to go...maybe in the next 46 years...

"I guess for me why my work doesn't ever seem current is that I try and stay with the intensity and the emotion, the feeling, without making it ironic...I don't know if I have but I do everything I can not to distance myself in the work. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. Where we are now in the art world is that artists go out of their way to distance themselves. I try to do just the opposite."

"What I've learned most about painting in 46 years is the act of surrender: to look at something and to know that you can keep stubbornly working on it to make it look like the way you think it should, or you can let go of that preciousness - that precious area that's keeping the painting from being finished. You can just wipe it out and trust something bigger than yourself to let it resolve....To me this is one of the most spiritual aspects of painting."