Brenda Goodman: Hop Skip Jump—New Work 2022

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present Hop Skip Jump—New Work 2022, a solo exhibition of oil and mixed media paintings by Brenda Goodman on view February 3 through March 11, 2023.

Spanning nearly sixty years, Brenda Goodman’s artistic career is defined by her resistance to any singular definition under medium, subject, or mode of representation. Vacillating between periods of pure abstraction and perceptible figuration, her works illuminate profound spaces of psychological expression and physical evocation. Joy, grief, humor, and vulnerability imbue the spirit of her paintings, oftentimes reflecting the conditions of Goodman’s own life at the time of their creation. The presence of the body—in flesh and in paint—resonates deeply: from her viscerally representational self-portraits of the 90s and early 2000s, to the organistic structures seen in her abstract compositions. Embracing the full material and conceptual capacities of paint, Goodman delves into the depths between form and meaning, cultivating new visions of interiority and terrains of perception.

The paintings featured in Hop Skip Jump were all produced by Goodman within the past year; shown collectively, they display a chronology of her recent practice and the evolutions in her visual methodology. While distinct geometries and textured chromaticism remain foundational to her abstractions, the intermittent “jumps” in her style and technique can be seen in her experimental applications of paint and lucid tonal atmospheres. Gauzy brushstrokes build up veneers of color, leaving behind perceptible brush marks and intimating the movement of the artist’s own hand. Shards of vivid yellows and glinting reds configure themselves against muted fields of taupe, gray, and pale green, attuned together by palpable veils of paint.

Goodman’s characteristic method of incising lines directly upon her panels is no longer ubiquitous; in many of the new paintings, spatial and emotional complexity are created in part through cropped and printed sections of older works, and thin veils of oil washes on tracing paper which are then pasted onto the panel surface. Diminutive areas of patterning and mosaic-like fragments become portals into their own worlds, framed and activated by the angular edges of adjoining formations. Balancing the fluidity of improvisation with technical surety of the medium, Goodman’s new paintings reveal shared realms of experience, invoking moments of reflection and dynamic conversations of shape, line, and color—conversations in which the viewer is invited to join.