Gary Goodman

Born in 1959, Goodman grew up in Bedford and began painting at an early age. He remembers ‘hownatural it felt’ when he first picked up a paintbrush at the age of five, and describes painting as ‘something I have always done on my own.’

However, his first mature love was literature, and he initially pursued creative writing. Painting has since taken precedence, though he still performs his poetry publicly, occasionally with punk poet legend and good friend Billy Childish, who has said of Goodman, ‘he belongs to that rare breed of artist… [who] value art over egotism' 

Working out of a studio in his garden, Gary’s work explores the world around him, often through the eyes of his teenage daughters, Tilda and Tin-Tin. His work is full of dark creatures and settings—wolves, bears, and wintry landscapes—which often reflect personal troubles, and the apprehension he intuits in his daughters’ responses to the world.

Although Gary has a taste for the darker things in life he remains upbeat, saying, ‘there is no way I would cut off my ear and definitely I could not shoot myself because it seems to me that there is always the possibility of something wonderful lurking like a maggot at the bottom of a Tequila bottle just around the corner.’