Review of Betty Goodwin's Artwork

Betty Goodwin is a contemporary artist, whose work draws out varieties of life’s significantly growing issues, especially among humans and the society. Majority of her most famous artwork is composed of very warm and dark colors such as heavy hues of reds and blacks. In addition, she uses a lot of negative space as she carefully places her subject matter in a specific position and a specific pose. Often, viewers find her work to a have a great amount of detailing in terms of context and application of media.

In 1983, Goodwin created one of her famous pieces called “Moving Towards Fire”, which isa part of her “swimmers series”. This particular artwork is made from “Oil, colored chalk and graphite on three sheets of thin wove paper”. The subject of the image -body- appears to be floating on the bottom right-hand corner of the wove paper. Goodwin uses texture through strokes of red and hints of white gaps to make the floating form of the human look burnt. In my art work, I made an effort to mimic this violent yet raw style on an apple. I chose to use soft pastel because from previous experience, I found that it would allow me to smudge more easily on cartage paper. First, I tested out a mixture of different colours that would match Goodwin’s colour scheme. Then, to create a similar texture I added strokes of peach/ beige on the surface of the apple, more specifically on the lighter portions. In her work, Goodwin also creates a“watery” effect surrounding the human which appears as the heat emitted by the flames. This effect provides context and therefore is one of the reasons whyher image appears visually interesting. In my work, I used my fingers to smudge the light red around the apple to mimic her style in the image while creating aviolently red aura representing the heat of the flames. Goodwin uses value to bring out the human form of the subject as seen thought the variation of the light and dark areas around the body. I added value to my apple though shading, merging and smudging light and dark toned colours. The addition of value really brings my work to life as it emphasizes the rawness and definition of the apple. The apple, in my case, symbolizing human society as it is the root cause of majority of the world’s good and bad happenings. The burning apple is a representation of the gradual degradation and turmoil that humans are swiftly moving towards.

To conclude, Betty Goodwin’s artwork genuinely drew me because of the open-endedness of her artwork. As a viewer, I found the composition and style of her work quite unique and visually intriguing. After conducting researching about her drive for her art, I was even more drawn towards her work. This is primarily because I’ve never seen an artist who actually puts forth just the darkness of humanity to such an astoundingly expressive manner. I enjoyed mimicking her style through the basicness of a mere apple. I was very stunned by the final result of my artwork because although it was virtually an apple, it nowconveyed a much more deeper meaning which may be left up to the interpretation of an individual.