Brenda Goodman: The Sum of Its Parts

BRENDA GOODMAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

2.12–3.21.26

BRENDA GOODMAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

2.12–3.21.26

For nearly sixty years, Brenda Goodman has created deeply expressive works at the intersection of abstraction and figuration. Her practice is guided by a relentless drive to experiment, wielding the formal qualities of paint—tactile impasto, gauzy veils of color, and built-up surface textures—to conjure realms of psychological confrontation and physical expression.

The works on view in The Sum of Its Parts span the 1970s to the present day. The Race (1973), a large-scale oil painting from early in Goodman’s career, depicts a central triangular figure affixed with paintbrushes in place of arms and legs. Scrawling—walking—across a canvas laid out on the floor, the bandaged, bulbous figure evinces a vulnerability rooted in the human desire to create, express, and communicate. Alongside The Race are several studio paintings from 2023 and a series of recent works on paper depicting a collection of treasured objects and artworks housed in a corner of Goodman’s living room. Drawn from life while the artist recovered from a hand injury at home, Goodman’s drawings balance narrative interiority with intricate spatial arrangements and a newfound lightness of medium.

The exhibition also features a group of oil paintings on wood created in 2024 and 2025. These abstract works are composed of vibrant, geometric configurations interspersed with dimensional forms and varying textural fields. Diminutive quotations of earlier paintings, such as the mosaic-like fragments nestled within Beyond My Dreams (2025) and No Obstacle Is Too Big (2025), act as portals to other dimensions, or entry points into the larger, ever-evolving chronology of Goodman’s practice. The Sum of Its Parts places these artistic shifts and personal experiences in conversation with one another, united by Goodman’s enduring sense of material, form, and space.

Brenda Goodman (born 1943, Detroit, Michigan) received her BFA from the College of Creative Studies. Her career began as a member of the famed Cass Corridor Movement in the 1960s, and her work has been the subject of over forty solo exhibitions, including a retrospective in 2015 at the College for Creative Studies and Paul Kotula Projects in Ferndale, Michigan.

Goodman’s work is included in the public collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago, Illinois; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York. Goodman lives and works in Pine Hill, New York.

Graphite and colored pencil on paper

Image: 9 1/8 × 11 1/4 inches (23.2 × 28.6 cm)

Sheet: 11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm)

Treasures #7, 2025

Graphite and colored pencil on paper

9 × 11 1/8 inches (22.9 × 28.3 cm)

11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm)

Treasures #5, 2025

Graphite and colored pencil on paper

9 × 11 1/4 inches (22.9 × 28.6 cm)

11 × 14 inches (27.9 × 35.6 cm)

I am 82 years old and have been painting for 60 years. This is my fourth show with Sikkema Malloy Jenkins and presents my work in two distinct parts. The first room consists of work from 1973 to 2025, while the paintings in the second room are all from 2024-25.

The Race (1973) was painted a year after my mother died. I had been out of art school for 7 years, and my paintings at the time were still heavily influenced by my favorite artists: de Kooning, Dubuffet, and Guston, to name a few. But my mother’s death, when she was only 52 and myself 29, threw me into a place I had never experienced. I sought a way to express the depth of my grief while also experimenting with the communicative potential of paint. The Race was an important breakthrough in my development as an artist—it was included in my first solo show in Detroit, and a well-known poet invited me to sit in on her creative writing class after seeing it. I did, and this began an eleven-year period of creating pictorial symbols that represented me and the people in my life. My paintings became a visual diary of how I felt, from experiences of great happiness to profound loss. Jumping to 2023, the paintings of my studio came after COVID. I thought they would be lighter than my previous work, but the series only lasted for several paintings. I found my studio too neat, without enough to intrigue or challenge me.

I recently had surgery on my right hand, which had to be bandaged. I found myself sitting with my incapacitated hand in our living room, looking at a collection of treasured objects, along with some of my own works and a few made by friends, arranged around our now unused wood stove. I saw these treasures every day, year after year, but now it occurred to me to try drawing them. I started with my left hand, which I knew would be a challenge, and then made several other drawings with my right hand once the bandage and stitches were removed. Why, I thought, was I not doing what I have always done in my work—expressing my pain, loss, fear, sadness? The world around me had become so utterly awful that I reached a point where I could barely listen to the news. But instead of painting from that dark place, I instead found a certain comfort using my 9H to 12B pencils to render on paper those collected tokens of joy, friendship, and home.

The second room in this exhibit contains new paintings made just before the drawings. Even more so, I feel they possess a clarity and rightness of all that I have become as a painter at the age of 82. The works in the two rooms are connected through my use of space. If one removes all the details of the drawings, the remaining space echoes the composition of the abstract paintings. All of my work, from the time I was in art school to today, comes from my emotions, and my love of making art. All of my work, from small-scale drawings of objects to large abstract oil paintings, is grounded in my sense of form and space. These are the qualities that unite and foster a dialogue among the works in this exhibition.

Brenda Goodman

January 14, 2026

Elsewhere, 2024 Oil and mixed media on canvas mounted on wood

BRENDA

GOODMAN

Born in Detroit, MI

Lives and works in Pine Hill, New York

EDUCATION

1965 BFA, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026

The Sum of Its Parts, Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York, NY, February 12–March 21, 2026

2024

A Long Journey: Paintings from 1989 to 2024, Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, New York, October 19–November 23, 2024 2023

Brenda Goodman: Back on Willis Street, Simone DeSousa Gallery, Detroit, MI, April 21–June 10, 2023

Hop Skip Jump—New Work 2022, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, February 3–March 11, 2023

2022

Self-Portraits, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, January 11–February 12, 2022

2021

Travelin’ Down That Painted Road, Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY, July 31–August 29, 2021

2020

Brenda Goodman: Entwined, Zephyr and Maize (virtual exhibition), August 6–November 19, 2020

On a New Coast, The Landing Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, January 25–March 14, 2020

2019

In a Lighter Place, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, January 24–February 23, 2019

2017

In a New Space, DAVID&SCHWEITZER Contemporary, Brooklyn, NY, September

8–October 1, 2017 2016

Brenda Goodman, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY, October 29–December 18, 2016 2015

Brenda Goodman: Selected Work, 1961-2015, Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI, November 14–December 19, 2018

A Life on Paper, Paul Kotula Projects, Ferndale, MI, November 14–December 19, 2015

Brenda Goodman, Life on Mars Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, March 20–April 19, 2015 2014

John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, July 17–August 10, 2014 2012

John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, July 19–August 12, 2012 2010

Brenda Goodman: Work 1990-2010, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, July 22–August 16, 2010

2008

John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY

Paul Kotula Projects, Ferndale, MI, March 1–April 5, 2008

2007

Brenda Goodman: Self-Portraits 2003-2007, Mabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, April 23–August 3, 2007

2003

Littlejohn Contemporary, New York, NY Revolution, Ferndale, MI 2001

Howard Scott Gallery, New York, NY 2000

Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA Revolution, Ferndale, MI 1999

Kouros Gallery, New York, NY

1998

Revolution, Ferndale, MI

1997

Robert Steele Gallery, New York, NY

1995

Revolution, Ferndale, MI

1994

Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY

David Klein Gallery, Birmingham, MI

1993

55 Mercer Street Artists, Inc., New York, NY

1989

Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA

1988

Hill Gallery, Birmingham, MI

1987

Feigenson Gallery, Detroit, MI

1985

Feigenson Gallery, Detroit, MI

1984

Feigenson Gallery, Detroit, MI

1983

Eason Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

1982

Feigenson Gallery, Detroit, MI

1981

Pam Adler Gallery, New York, NY

Marianne Deson Gallery, Chicago, IL

1980

Feigenson-Rosenstein Gallery, Detroit, MI

1979

Pam Adler Gallery, New York, NY

1978

Feigenson-Rosenstein Gallery, Detroit, MI

Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, IL

1976

Willis Gallery, Detroit, MI

1974

Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit, MI

1973

Willis Gallery, Detroit, MI

TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS

2018

Two-Person Exhibition with Amy Pleasant, NADA, NY, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY, March 8–11, 2018

2016

Trembling Halves, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, PA, February 5–28, 2016, curated by Lauren Britton and Zachery Keeting

1991

Brenda Goodman & Jackie Brookner, Pamela Auchincloss Gallery, New York, NY

1982

Brenda Goodman & Morris Brose, Sarkis Galleries, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI

1976

Brenda Goodman & Bobbie Oliver, Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

The Agnes Gund Collection

American Medical Association Headquarters, Chicago, IL

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL

California Center for the Arts Museum, Escondido, CA

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

The First National Bank of Chicago, Chicago, IL

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, IL

Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago, IL

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Rutgers-Camden Collection of Art, Stedman Art Gallery, Camden, NJ

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

The Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York