Catherine Goodman: Portraits from Life

Nov. 14, 2014

Catherine Goodman: Portraits from Life is on display at the National Portrait Gallery until this Sunday 23rd November.

An exhibition of striking new larger-than-life-sized portraits by the painter Catherine Goodman, Artistic Director of the Royal Drawing School and winner of the BP Portrait Award 2002 is on display at the National Portrait Gallery until Sunday 23rd November.

Harry

Film director Stephen Frears, writer and broadcaster Daisy Goodwin, novelist Vikram Seth, Prince’s Drawing School student and friend Harry Parker and lawyer Diana Rawstron are among the subjects of Portraits from Life, which opened on 17 June 2014.

Goodman has been working on the paintings and drawings, which are seen in this exhibition for the first time, over the past three years. All sittings took place at the artist’s London studio where all her subjects sat in the duck-egg blue chair which can be clearly seen as a unifying element in the portraits.

Catherine Goodman says of the work, ‘The process of making a portrait is fundamental for me. The long periods of time spent in the studio together mean that trust develops between us and relationships deepen. For me, good portraits have psychological depth but it's not something that comes without mining’. 

Goodman’s paintings are psychological as much as painterly, and it is her interest in the fragility of life that guides her choice of subjects for this exhibition. In a fast world, she is an artist prepared to wait for the truth to surface: making slow portraits that, little by little, scratch beneath the surface to unveil what is ordinarily hidden behind a public face.

Diana Rawstron - The Lawyer

‘She believes in direct drawing and painting, piercing observation and constantly re-visiting the subject. I have been watching these portraits evolve,’ says Sarah Howgate, National Portrait Gallery Contemporary Curator, ‘and I have been struck by the obvious intensity of Catherine's relationship with her sitters and how they all appear to be looking inwards.’ 

Catherine Goodman: Portraits from Life at the National Portrait Gallery closes this Sunday 23rd November.

Stephen Frears - The Film Director