Joe Goodwin, ‘Vesica Pisces,’ acrylic on canvas on panel, 2015
(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) ? Works by Berkshire artist Joe Goodwin go on view in the Ellen Crane Memorial Room at Berkshire Museum on Saturday, April 2, and will remain on display through Sunday, June 19, 2016. An opening reception for Liminal Artifacts: Recent Paintings by Joe Goodwin will be held on Saturday, April 2, from 5 to 7pm.
Tickets to the opening reception are $10 adult, $5 child, museum members free. Please RSVP to 413.443.7171 ext. 313.
Goodwin’s abstract paintings appear ethereal, enigmatic, and reflective, in atmospheric images that reference natural phenomena. Goodwin works in acrylic paint that he mixes from dry pigments and polymer emulsions, applied in an innovative layered process that involves additives such as marble dust and silica. The meticulous layering of paint and texture produces a distinctive sense of depth in the paintings.
“While working on my MFA at the University of Illinois, I became interested in the work and ideas of C.G. Jung, especially his concept of the collective unconscious and his interest in dreams,” says Goodwin. “Dreams defy physics and amplify experience with their ambiguous spaces, symbolic meanings, and sensations that seem to speak from and to a sixth sense. In this way, painting and dreaming have much in common, both in process and result. Painting allows my subconscious perceptions to register graphically, similar to the way they do in dreams. I have come to see painting as a developing solution to the unconscious.”
“I have great respect for artists who continue to evolve their work, and Joe’s career encompasses a wide range of painting styles from tightly executed realism to his current body of non-objective work,” says Van Shields, Berkshire Museum’s executive director. “As with most artists at the top of their game, a constant for Joe’s art is a sense of purposefulness, even as his inspiration for his current work springs from the unconscious.”
Joe Goodwin, ‘Odic Force,’ 48 x 60, acrylic on canvas, 2015
Goodwin has had solo shows of his work at a number of galleries in New York, N.Y.; the Tremaine Gallery and the Morgan Lehman Gallery, among others, in Connecticut; and the Ferrin Gallery, Lichtenstein Center, and Ute Stebich Gallery in Massachusetts, as well as locations in Colorado and New Mexico. Internationally, his work has been shown at Fumi Kimura/Tsunehisa Takayama in Tokyo, Japan, and in Germany at Gallerie Reuss, Casavanti Art and AVA Gallery in Weisbaden, Gallerie Gruner Panter in Frankfurt, Deutsche Bank in Baden Baden, and Hemma Ysenburg in Budingen. Goodwin’s work has been included in many group shows over the years, from California and Florida to Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts in the United States and overseas at Art Museum Timisoara in Romania and Gallerie Reuss in Weisbaden, Germany.
In September of 2015, Goodwin was invited to be a plenary presenter of his work at “Art and Psyche, Sicily,” held in Siracusa, Sicily, and sponsored by the International Association for Analytical Psychology. This four-day conference, titled “Layers and Liminality,” explored the creative process of various artists in regard to the co-existence of art and psyche in a liminal space. In 2011, Goodwin was invited to present his work to the most recent conference of AWAKE in Mendicino County, California. AWAKE comprises a group of artists, curators, museum personnel, and others who gather to discuss the influences of Buddhist thought on contemporary art.
Works by Goodwin are part of the collections at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Flagstaff, Arizona; the Naples Museum of Art in Naples, Florida; the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio; the Bartlett Art Center at Oklahoma State University; the Yellowstone Art Center in Billings, Montana; and the Berkshire Museum. His paintings and monotypes are included in a large number of corporate and private collections as well.
Goodwin holds BAE and BFA degrees from Oklahoma State University and an MFA from the University of Illinois. He served as studio assistant to Leon Polk Smith in the early 1980s and from 1997 to 2003 he was an adjunct faculty member for the Duke University program Leadership and the Arts – A Semester in New York. He established a studio in New York City in 1978 and then in the Berkshires in 2004.
About the Berkshire Museum
Located in downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at 39 South St., the Berkshire Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $13 adult, $6 child; Museum members and children age 3 and under enjoy free admission. For more information, visit Berkshire Museum or call 413.443.7171.
In association with the Smithsonian since 2013, Berkshire Museum is part of a select group of museums, cultural, educational, and arts organizations that share the Smithsonian’s resources with the nation.
Established by Zenas Crane in 1903, Berkshire Museum integrates art, history, and natural science in a wide range of programs and exhibitions that inspire educational connections between the disciplines. In the galleries, ArtZoo will be on view January 23 through May 1. Little Cinema is open year-round. Spark!Lab, Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation, Worlds in Miniature, Aquarium, and other exhibits are ongoing.