Drawing from Film with Catherine Goodman

Participate in a drawing session led by London-based artist Catherine Goodman on the occasion of her exhibition, ‘Silent Music.’ 

Developed as part of the Drawing from Film program at The Royal Drawing School, participants will be invited to call for the film to be paused for six minutes on any given still to complete fast-paced drawings in semi-darkness. These playful interactions offer new ways of looking and are an opportunity to consider the cinematographer’s point of view.

‘By using the director or cameraman’s eye, there is a sense in which compositional choices are made for you. Some people are more attracted to drawing portraits of people, others to large, panoramic landscapes. The experience can be quite playful: you have to compromise and accept being taken out of your comfort zone. By the end of the film, you will emerge with a cache of images and ideas. Sometimes you will find that the most stimulating images are those with which you were least comfortable at the time, and these can feed into your wider artistic practice.’—Catherine Goodman

This session in New York will feature the film ‘Fanny and Alexander’ (1982). Ingmar Bergman’s family saga encompasses a year in the life of the extended Ekdahl clan, as mostly seen through the eyes of the imaginative young Alexander. Part fairy tale, part existential drama, ‘Fanny and Alexander’ is a lush banquet of a film, featuring Oscar-winning cinematography, art direction, and costume design.

All drawing abilities are welcome. Materials will be provided. For the sake of timing, the film will not be shown in its entirety.

This event is free, but capacity is limited. Reservations are required. Photographs will be taken at this event for use on Hauser & Wirth’s website and social media channels, and in other marketing materials.

About Catherine Goodman
For more than four decades, Catherine Goodman CBE has developed a unique visual language that communicates a powerful visionary response to her lived experience and memory. Goodman’s intensely expressive painting process uses strongly pigmented oil paint, brushwork, oil sticks, drips and washes to create atmospheric and immersive paintings which explore both figuration and abstraction.

Central to Goodman’s artistic process is the act of drawing directly from life, her intimate knowledge of the old master painters and drawing from film, where she immerses in the legends of the modern cinema age. In Goodman’s words, “drawing can bring about a sense of unity and create a portal into other realms of consciousness”. This daily practice roots her mark-making in observation and informs and enriches her paintings.

Catherine Goodman’s role as an educator is integral to her artistic identity. Since graduating from art school, Goodman has been organizing drawing classes for the homeless and other community groups, demonstrating a longstanding commitment to social justice in art education. In 2000, this led her to co-establish the Royal Drawing School with HRH King Charles III, to address the increasing absence of drawing in art education and to give wider access to disadvantaged students.

About the exhibition
In her most recent works, Goodman’s characteristically expressive brushwork yields animated surfaces that pulse with the frenetic energy of their making. For Goodman, the studio is a place of spiritual meditation. Each painting represents an act of intimate transmutation—a way for her to turn closely held memories and personal vulnerabilities into newfound stability. Goodman often begins from landscapes and portraits that hold particular meaning for her. Densely layering paint on top of these figurative grounds, she obscures her source material while building evocatively charged canvases that invite sustained attention. Though rooted in the personal, Goodman’s work remains resolutely open-ended. Drawing on the intensity and drama of renaissance masters such as Titian and Veronese, and the poignant psychology of the London School painters, her transcendent paintings open out to the world.

Image: Left: Catherine Goodman in her studio, London, UK, 2024 © Catherine Goodman. Photo: Damian Griffiths. Right: ‘Fanny and Alexander’, 1982. Courtesy Janus Films

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