Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Carol Goodman
Article 23 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the October 5, 2005 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Watercolours to Dream By
An artist's vision shapes her life. The task is then to create the person who can paint the painting or write the poem, dance the dance. For some this can take a lifetime. For others the desire is so intense it comes to define who and what they are. A purity of purpose leads them back no matter how crazy and confused the world around them becomes.
For Carol Goodman this need to shape her life around an inner vision of beauty, joy and innocence has been there for as long as she can remember. Raised by a mother who read her fairy tales - together they would leave out water for the fairies overnight - she came to believe in the power of 'faery' to feed the soul.
"I was asked in grade four what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered - 'An artist who loves Nature, who loves children.' I am still that girl. For me art is like a prayer - it is the way I connect with the spirit world. It is my way of giving back, of bringing something beautiful back to others who have a harder time believing."
Carol's paintings capture this enclosed, quiet, magical realm where the faces of children blossom like flowers, where gossamer wings lift them again a pale and luminous sky - as if they themselves were pure spirit, bodiless, yearning after the infinite. Eyes downcast and veiled, these fairy children seem both solemn and whimsical. Dream children. Wise old souls. Self-contained despite their obvious vulnerability. The delicacy of their presence breathes through the ethereal quality of Carol's watercolours.
"When I paint, time stops. It is as if water is flowing before my eyes. I don't actually see my paintings. I have a conversation with the paint, and with visual images I know I have to draw. My paintings are windows into the fairy realm. I get such pleasure knowing that I can cross over. But I never force it. I let the watercolours flow. Everything remains fluid, open, and then there is that moment when I sense the painting is done."
Five and a half years ago Carol came to Wakefield, approaching the village for the first time in a canoe with her two small children. Intuitively she knew she had found 'home'. "This is a special place where the soul can rest. The veil to the spirit world is thinner here. You can be more open and trusting. People celebrate who you are". Out of a dificult marriage, she would forge a new future.
Carol's search for a cohesive vision in her life has taken her through 12 years as a jewellery designer with a Fair Trade business, Moonlpodge Designs, working with Mayan jewellery-makers out of Guatemala, into a study of Herbalism with Kathleen Leeson in the Wise Woman Tradition.
"There are many healers in Wakefield, many on the healing path. Here you can put pieces of the self back together. Here you can live with your children and trust what you already know. I paint out of that belief in innocence and love and joy"