Still Living with the Fishermen
Greenhut Galleries, Portland, Maine
July 2003, Opening Reception July 10, 5:00pm,
SEE THE EXHIBIT
"Art should be a place where you can pray, where you receive intense spiritual help, a kingdom of peace. Art should help you to find the way you have lost. Art must be precious. Art must create values and not destroy values. One should feel with art protected as if you were really at home." -- Friedensreich Hundertwasser
In 1995 Alison Goodwin started painting saints with simple, geometric faces and wide eyes that looked right at you. They reached out offering bread, fruits, and fish. Androgynous and beautiful, they were often unclothed, erotic creatures that expressed at once temptation and redemption.
Soon the saints were dressed in glorious robes, appearing in colorful rooms. Their formal garments suggested sacrament and they moved with comfort through Goodwin's interiors, carrying their offerings as house blessings.
Maine Fishermen saints, still wide-eyed and geometric, appeared in bright orange rain gear standing in boats or by the sea. These haloed beings were reminiscent of a deep elemental connection to the Maine coast. They held out fish as offerings, as if their trips to sea yielded supernatural gifts that they needed to share with us.
Her saints have become the prayers of this artist's work, appearing – from time to time – within familiar Goodwin landscapes and interiors. Their appearance accentuates the optimism and brightness that marks Goodwin's work, expressing a redeeming faith that is ever present in her world.
Still Living with the Fishermen expresses new dimensions of this faith. The Saints altarpiece – an image of working fishermen surrounded by portraits of a father and his three sons – expresses the holiness Goodwin sees in the working lives of Maine fishermen. These saints are humans, not the other-worldy figures seen elsewhere in her work. They are bound together in human relationship as family, and they fish the sea that we might eat. In their struggle and their work, Goodwin sees dignity, character and grace. Adam and Edna is a playful depiction of the Garden of Eden, a beach ball replacing the apple, the haloed human figures reminding us of the divine nature of love and sexuality.
In these works, framed in a tabernacular style and adorned with milagros Goodwin collected in New Mexico, we see a faith that calls us back to traditional religious imagery, but one that offers a post-modern twist. This is a faith that the artist asks us to invent ourselves, where she teaches us to create value in the world around us in ways that are meaningful to us and which we can share with others. These paintings ask us to learn from faith and give with spirit.
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