THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702220044
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 101 lines
NORMAN GOODWIN spent much of last week photographing several hundred of his own paintings. One by one, he'd set up canvases and works on paper out in his yard amid the boxwood shrubs.
As he shot the slides, he reviewed his own art, dating from the 1960s into the '90s.
``I've rediscovered myself,'' he pronounced as his task wound down.
Goodwin will speak at 3 p.m. today at The Chrysler Museum of Art. His slide talk on ``The Role of the Urban Artist'' is hosted by the Norfolk Society of Arts.
Normally, who would picture an urban artist as someone who languishes in the backyard paradise of his childhood home, staring affectionately at dogwood trees?
``Unless you live in downtown Norfolk, the urbanization we have in our city is more like suburbanization,'' Goodwin said. ``No, no, no. We don't have that hardened element of urbanization you see in the big cities.''
In pegging himself an ``urban artist,'' Goodwin is thinking of Southern city life with its eccentricities, its history and slower pace.
``Being an artist is a 24-hour involvement with life. And I think I have that going. I love the esthetics of being a creative person. But at the age of 52, I feel like it's something I've become sort of an expert doing,'' he said. ``Existing as an artist.''
Goodwin pieces together a living by appraising fine and decorative arts, designing interiors, auctioning fine and decorative arts to raise money for charities he believes in, and teaching painting for 25 years in the adult education program at Old Dominion University.
He's teaching four courses at the moment, and happy to do so - ``because, by God, we (artists) need an audience. And the only way people are going to really appreciate the fine arts is to be directly involved. And then they'll see what an addiction it is.''
Just pushing paint around on a canvas ``is a soulfully cleansing thing. You come in contact with yourself, or should try to. That's the hardest thing: Finding one's identity and expressing it in your work.''
Art has always been essential to his well-being. ``If I don't do it, I don't feel the rest of life has any real meaning at all, other than necessity,'' he said.
While Goodwin has been finding himself through art all these years, he also has provided a colorful pseudo-chronicle of life in Hampton Roads.
Artist Alan Gussow, in his 1993 book ``The Artist as Native: Reinventing Regionalism,'' champions the notion of an artist such as Goodwin spending his career interpreting in art the special qualities of a locale.
The mission of such work, Gussow writes, is ``to remind people that they do indeed live somewhere, that places, those parts of the world we claim with our feelings, have value.''
Who else besides Goodwin has painted the seamier, festive side of old Ocean View with such zest and character? And who besides him has so affectionately painted downtown Norfolk, with its handsome stone facades and people of the street?
For 28 years, he lived in a huge, rambling West Ghent apartment. (In 1993, he moved back home to the Cromwell Farm neighborhood to be with his mother after his father died.) While his Ghent street scenes are notable for the lyrical rendering of the turn-of-the-century architecture in that city neighborhood, he also has captured the communal liveliness here better than anyone else.
Goodwin, who acted on regional and New York stages while in his 20s, has a keen eye for pictorial drama, often of an amusingly sordid nature.
His paintings with figures generally have a storytelling impulse and are keen on establishing character, motive, even action.
He talked about his '90s painting titled ``The Family.'' It was a Sunday afternoon in Virginia Beach when Goodwin spied a mother with her three children at the shore, all dressed up. He projected himself into the scene, sensing a story, then began to identify and sympathize.
``I imagined the mother had promised them she would take them to the beach. The little girl had her pocketbook, and she wanted to take off her socks and shoes. God love her, that woman was being both parents. And that's such a typical sight these days. The father off God knows where, perhaps in the Navy.
``Those are the types of people I like to show in my work.''
He prefers to paint the stuff of everyday life - from telephone poles to cars, his favorite urban symbol.
And he knows how different Norfolk is from New York. Goodwin spent at least six years in Manhattan, earning his BFA at Cooper Union and his MFA at Columbia University.
He returned in 1972 and never left. For an artist, staying in one place has its rewards.
``I have this painting of the park across the street from my house. And I see the park change regularly, season to season, and I reevaluate the composition. And I really like that.
``I like having a tree I can watch change. It gives you a feeling of stability, and of evolution in your life.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN / The Virginian-Pilot
Norman Goodwin, in his Norfolk home/studio, says, ``Being an artist
is a 24-hour involvement with life.'' His painting ``1009 Brandon''
is at right.
Graphic
WANT TO GO?
What: ``The Role of the Urban Artist,'' a slide lecture by
Norfolk artist Norman Goodwin
Where: The Chrysler Museum of Art, 245 W. Olney Road, Norfolk
When: 3 p.m. today
How much: free
Call: 664-6200