Drawing from observation is a collaboration. In the act of drawing, you are participating in a breathing landscape, the curves of a human body, the stillness of an object, the lines of a building and the nuance of color and shadow. You are absorbing the atmosphere in the interaction and, as the painter Catherine Goodman said, “creating a portal into other realms of consciousness.” Drawing is so fundamental to Goodman’s practice that she started the Royal Drawing School in London with HM King Charles III in 2000. Today the school has over 3,000 students taught by seventy-five practicing artists. “The school would have twice as many students if we had the facility. Seven hundred people applied for postgraduate studies, but there was only room for thirty,” she said.
Well-regarded in the U.K. as a figurative painter in the School of London tradition, Goodman is a trustee of the National Gallery of London and has access to the museum after hours to observe and sketch. She continues to carry around a sketchbook everywhere she goes and draws constantly. At one point during our interview, she said, “I’m looking at you now, and I’d love to draw you. I have to draw people I’m interested in.” The National Portrait Gallery acquired her portrait of film director Stephen Frears for its 20th Century Collection.
Goodman joined Hauser & Wirth two years ago after a four-decades-long career. Thus far, she has had two exhibitions: one in L.A. this past fall and another currently on in New York, “Silent Music,” which features twelve large-scale abstract paintings. Observer caught up with Goodman to discuss the works in the show, her unique approach to abstraction and the artists who’ve influenced her.
You have Russian blood, and I can sense in these recent abstracts the cruelty and beauty of Russia. The explosive, hard strokes of red and orange over quiet portals of deep blue and turquoise. You slash and cover the quiet.
Thank you for that reflection. That feels very real to me. These things are one’s voice, so deep that you’re not conscious of them. They’re your DNA, what made you. And culturally, I feel attuned to Eastern European paintings—Soutine, Gorky, Leon Kossoff. Leon and I were very close. We took walks together and talked. My grandmother lost her husband in the Revolution, came to London and married another Russian. They never knew when they were going home, like so many refugees today. And my grandparents never did go home. I was a child, half in a Russian world and half in a British, bohemian, less warm world. I loved the rituals and reverence for beauty in the Russian Orthodox Church. As a tiny child, the first images I saw were the big painted heads, the icons, flickering in the candlelight, bringing about the glow of gold. The mystery, a component of life that’s there. I’m accepting it and integrating it. England is rational, no-nonsense. I’m always trying to put these two things together.
You certainly do that in these abstracts. They feel like your whole body is traveling across the massive canvases, some over six feet by seven feet. The brush strokes feel like attacks over quiet pools. You must go through a lot of brushes.
I use large French radiator brushes you buy in building supply stores. They use them to paint radiators. I wash them every evening. Under the abstracts are figurative images—not defacing them, I hope, but painting their equivalent. I put lots of titles, playful really, on the backs. A working title at the beginning. I can work on a painting for months, going through four titles until the end. I’ve often thought that my figurative paintings have nothing to do with the subject, just as my finished paintings have nothing to do with the title.
You paint from films. Tell me about that.
Every Monday night, many of my ex-students and I get together—we’re a very tight-knit community. We can stop the film at any time and paint the still for six minutes, then move on. I’ve watched Malek’s Days of Heaven many times. There’s a different kind of pathos, nothing artificial. I love Sam Shepard in it, and I love his writing. I paint my secret crushes. I also love Andrei Tarkovsky’s films. The Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote, “You have to chase beauty to its lair.” I feel that way when I’m struggling with a painting, you have to chase it. You can’t stop halfway there.
Are abstracts new for you?
Thirty years ago, in school, I painted them. I had no money; I was painting and teaching. Then I moved on to mostly figurative paintings. I taught drawing to people with disabilities. I also taught drawing to homeless people and lived with them in a homeless shelter. I’ve always been involved with social justice. In 2000, I won a prestigious portrait award and kept on doing figurative paintings. Even now, under all my abstracts are figurative paintings.
A lot must have changed for you, being with Hauser & Wirth for the last two years.
Yes, it’s good. If they take you on, it’s 100 percent. I’ve passed on the Drawing School—people in their forties are now running the school, and that is as it should be. I’m still the Founding Director, as they call me. We’re working on an interesting project right now with the faculty looking at the challenges of the next twenty years. Young people who grew up with digital media, how the screen affects them, diagnostic and philosophical. How drawing brings together the hand, mind and heart. And I’m still teaching, this time with a calligrapher, using the body, how the body makes a mark. How you make marks naturally or unnaturally. Extending your vocabulary in an interesting way.
How is the Drawing School doing today?
It is thriving. There’s a hunger from living an unnatural life on their phones, the unnatural images that are given to them. Students instinctively feel they need to make images rather than the images being given to them. We’re all hypnotized by these unnatural things. Now it’s about mental health, about attention, breathing, just sitting and observing. Drawing is our primary language.
With Hauser & Wirth, is there pressure to produce?
They’re very respectful of their artists. It means that I can now show and sell in the States. The New York exhibit sold out. I’m 64, and that’s a big shift. It means I can paint all the time. I work many hours. I wake up thinking about painting. I’m a bit obsessed. And I draw all the time. It’s my solace. Attention and being present in the moment. A sense of wonder when you’re looking deeply at something.
What artists have influenced you?
I’m really influenced by the big paintings of Veronese and Titian. I don’t copy them. I draw from them as drawing from life. Big paintings that you can walk into. A contemplative state. I’m also inspired by Baselitz and Richter. I knew the school of London painters, that was the culture I was brought up in—Paula Rego, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud and Leon Kossoff. The Abstract Expressionist painters, of course. I love poetry and start every day with a poem. Elizabeth Bishop and Rilke really inspired my New York abstracts.
What is your next project?
The project will be an exhibition at Boughton House in Northamptonshire, which has extraordinary tapestries (Mortlake and others). I’m doing some large abstract paintings in response to the drawings that I’ve made of the tapestries in the Great Hall there. I’m also working with a tapestry studio in South Africa. The exhibition will be in the summer of 2026 at Boughton. And I will continue to meditate, read poetry and books, draw and paint every single day, entering different states of consciousness. I like to be hidden.
“Catherine Goodman. Silent Music” is at Hauser & Wirth, New York, through April 12, 2025.
