Betty Goodwin

Betty Roodish Goodwin, (March 19, 1923 – December 1, 2008) was a multidisciplinary Canadian artist who expressed the complexity of human experience through her work.

Early life
Goodwin was born in Montreal, the only child of Romanian immigrants Clare Edith and Abraham Roodish. She enjoyed painting and drawing as a child, and was encouraged by her mother to pursue art. Goodwin's father, a factory owner in Montreal, died when she was nine. After graduating from high school, she studied design at Valentine's Commercial School of Art in Montreal.

Career
In her work, Goodwin used a variety of media, including collage, sculpture, printmaking, painting and drawing, assemblage and etchings. Her subject matter almost always revolves around the human form and deals with it in a highly emotional way. Many of her ideas came from clusters of photographs, objects or drawings on the walls in her studio. She also used the "germ" of ideas that are left after being erased from a work. Goodwin launched her career as a painter and printmaker in the late 1940s. During the 1950s and 60s Goodwin created still life paintings. She also depicted scenes of Montreal's Jewish Community.

In 1968, she enrolled in an etching class with Yves Gaucher at Sir George Williams University in Montreal. It was there where she began working with found objects and clothing and how they held traces of life, in her prints, which brought her international attention. Dissatisfied with her work, she destroyed most of it and in 1968 she limited herself to drawing. From 1972 to 1974, she created a series of wall hangings entitled Tarpaulin, which she reworked to shape into sculptures and collages.

Over a period of six years beginning in 1982, Goodwin explored the human form in her drawing series Swimmers, a project which used graphite, oil pastels and charcoal on translucent Mylar. The large-scale drawings depict solitary floating or sinking bodies, suspended in space. In 1986, to show the interaction of human figures she created her series Carbon using charcoal and wax for her drawings. Two more series followed: La mémoire du corps (1990–1995) and Nerves (1993–1995).

She died in December 2008 in Montreal.

Personal
She was married to Martin Goodwin, a civil engineer (d. 2008). Their son Paul died at 30 of a drug overdose.

Selected exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
 * 1976 - Betty Goodwin 1969-76, Musee d'art contemporian, Montreal, Quebec
 * 1996 - Betty Goodwin: Signs of Life, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
 * 1998 - The Art of Betty Goodwin, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
 * 2002 - The Prints of Betty Goodwin, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Group exhibitions
 * 1955 - Print Exhibition, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec
 * 1967 - Burnaby Print Show, Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby, BC
 * 1974 - Spanish International Biennial Exhibition of Fine Prints, Segovia, Spain
 * 1986 - Installations-Fictions, Galerie Graff, Montreal, Quebec
 * 1991 - Betty Goodwin, Espacc la Tranchefile, Montreal
 * 1993 - Fawbush Gallery; New York, New York; Les Femmeuses 92, Pratt et Whitney Canada, Montreal, Quebec
 * 1994 - La Ferme Du Buisson, Centre d'art contemporian, Noisiel, France
 * 1996 - Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
 * 1999 - Cosmos, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec
 * 2000 - Odd Bodies, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario; Betty Goodwin, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, New York

Notable artworks

 * 1979: Rue Mentana
 * 1985: Moving Towards Fire
 * 1988-89: Steel Note

Selected collections
Her work is represented in many public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the city of Burnaby art collection, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Honours

 * Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award of the Canada Council for the Arts (1981)
 * Banff Centre National Award for Visual Arts (1984)
 * Prix Paul-Émile Borduas (1986)
 * Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1988)
 * Gershon Iskowitz Prize (1995)
 * Harold Town Prize in drawing (1998)
 * Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2003)
 * Order of Canada (2003)
 * Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
 * honorary doctorates from schools across Canada