Sharon Goodman Exhibit Opens March 4
A new exhibit at Fairmont State University showcases the paintings of Sharon Goodman of Morgantown.
The exhibit opens Wednesday, March 4, from with a gallery talk by the artist from 7-9 p.m. and continues throughout March in the newly refurbished Brooks Gallery, located on the fourth floor of Wallman Hall on the FSU and Pierpont C&TC main campus. Admission is free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are Mondays through Fridays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For special arrangements, call or e-mail Curator Marian J. Hollinger at (304) 367-4300 or mhollinger@fairmontstate.edu.
Abstract artist Sharon Goodman was born in 1941 in Detroit, Mich., and began studying art at age 14. Choosing to live and raise a family in Morgantown, where her husband, now retired, was a professor, Goodman graduated with an M.F.A. from West Virginia University in 1978. She studied printmaking under Will Petersen at West Virginia University and spent a year in Florence, Italy, studying early Renaissance art. Goodman works primarily with oil on paper and canvas, often in series and triptychs, creating paintings that range in size from 4" x 4" to 60" x 60." She also works in lithography, encaustic and glass.
Goodman has been the recipient of a West Virginia Fellowship for the Arts, through the National Endowment for the Arts, and numerous other awards. She has had over 20 solo exhibitions and been part of over 40 invitational and juried exhibitions. Sharon Goodman's work can be found in private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe, as well as in the permanent collections of West Virginia University and the University of Charleston. Her work has been represented by galleries in New York; Pittsburgh; Cleveland; Detroit; Tampa; Hagerstown, Md.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Morgantown.
Goodman's words describe her work and provide her artist's statement for the viewers: "My paintings are immediate and energetic. I want the motions of my hand to be apparent on the paper or canvas and add another dimension to the painting-a spontaneity that the viewer can feel. My work is inspired by movement and color. I have danced for many years, and movement and the body in motion inform my paintings. Nature also inspires my art, as in the curving of a leaf, the bending of a weed, or the color of rushes swaying by a pond.
"Although my paintings are not representational, I work in series that are grounded in elemental themes such as water, sky or earth, or in places I have been. I do not expect the viewer to identify these elements in my work, only to get a sense of what the titles imply. I want the marks, the color and shapes, the brush strokes and layers on the paper or canvas to be compelling to the viewer so that their sources need not be identified."
