Catherine Goodman: Do you remember me...

Wed-Sun, 7 Jun – 29 Oct 2023

11am-5pm

Coach House gallery

Free with grounds admission

This is a past exhibition

Do you remember me… is a major new exhibition at Waddesdon, showcasing never before seen works by Catherine Goodman.

Displayed in the Coach House Gallery and the Drawings Room of the Manor, the exhibition focuses on a new body of work including a selection of her new paintings, drawings, collages and works on paper which capture the landscape of Corfu and its rugged, vibrant beauty.

For over 12 years, celebrated British artist Catherine Goodman has been visiting the Greek island of Corfu. Each visit, she returns to the same, isolated point of the island where a grove of ancient, gnarled olive trees is framed by the bright blue sea and sky, to draw what she sees. Returning to her studio, Goodman translates these drawings into collages and paintings.

Catherine Goodman’s art is rooted in observational drawing. Through this daily act, the artist examines and places her personal experience in an intense relationship with the natural environment. As a result, her paintings are charged with colour and gesture to create deeply atmospheric and engaging experiences for the viewer.

These works are an exploration of the relationship I have formed with a piece of nature, a landscape that I have got to know intimately over many years. When I visit the olive grove now, I have the sense of the landscape knowing me as well as I know it, I sense the trees looking back at me as I look at them and my drawing is a silent dialogue between us.
Catherine Goodman

A highlight of the exhibition is surely the monumental, seven-panelled Frieze which depicts a grove of ancient olive trees framed by the vivid blues of the sea and sky behind. It will be complemented by a triptych of a single tree captured through the day – morning, midday and evening – as well as further paintings and a suite of powerful pastel drawings.

One of the inspirations for the paintings, and particularly the seven-panelled Frieze, is Ovid’s great poem, Metamorphoses, specifically the legend of the nymph Daphne, extracts from which are hand-scribed by the artist on the wall above the paintings. The mythological imagery in this poem, and Daphne’s transformation into a tree to escape Apollo’s pursuit, is a recurring theme for the artist.

There can be few artists working today for whom landscape holds such an intense and personal connection as Catherine Goodman. In this work, she creates extraordinary visual encounters with trees that become more characters - old friends - than natural forms...the work is complex, layered, powerful, thoughtful and invites close looking.
Pippa Shirley, Director of Waddesdon

About Catherine Goodman

Catherine Goodman (b. 1961) is an artist based in London, working between her London studios and Somerset. She trained at London’s Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts, and the Royal Academy Schools, at which she won the Royal Academy Gold Medal in 1987.

Goodman’s paintings are held in numerous private and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge and the Royal Collection Trust.

Central to her artistic process is the act of drawing from observation, whether from life, objects or the great masters and their works. Goodman sees her role as an educator as being integral to her artistic identity and in 2000 she co-established the Royal Drawing School with HRH The Prince of Wales, to address the increasing absence of observational drawing in art education.