June 8th - July 5th, 2010: Karen Goodfellow, "Ancestral Dreams"
Walls: Mixed Media Paintings
Cases: Altered Native Drums & Gourds
With deeper awareness, inspired by experimental art and Aboriginal native art, Karen Goodfellow is an emerging artist with First Nations ancestry. Her spiritual paintings are both mystical and indigenous in nature including figurative, realist, mixed media, landscape and abstract, while her gourd work and native drums reflect her origins, her heritage.
Goodfellow's art drums feature inspirational word definitions and a series lasered images, melted and burned into the elk hide, and then festively decorated.
"My influences are so varied and then must get buried and lie latent in my psyche," Goodfellow acknowledges. She doesn't paint in what you might think as the usual fashion where you pick a subject and then paint. "Instead, I feel into my moods then paint, applying texture for about six to 16 layers, before I feel a background is finished. I then hang out with a cuppa tea and wait until the painting shows me what it will be. I turn it around on each side and wait and fight the urge to force a painting. Then, after three hours or three years, I see a finished painting. I chalk it in, and then do my best to complete what I see."
Goodfellow told me that sometimes she feels caught - that previously, gallery owners have suggested to her that she has talent but she needs to focus on one style to be commercially successful, yet Goodfellow deems that her method doesn't really fit in to this cookie-cutter approach because she doesn't 'give' a painting a certain style, subject matter or colour.
She says, "My paintings are very contrived and tense when I try and do something similar to another painting so they look nice together when they hang or so a viewer is more comfortable with what a 'Goodfellow' is."
This developmental progression has given her confidence and belief her process. "My evolution then is a deeper trust in what is buried within regardless of me trying to fit in artistically or financially." she says.
Goodfellow confesses that she creates broad themes for her shows because her approach doesn't lend itself to something finite. Her creative stimulation for this series is generally living in both the American Southwest and Pacific Northwest while delving into her native roots, which is very obvious when you view her art. She uses the elements of strong colour and natural materials to emphasize contrast between components.
Goodfellow describes, "A lot of my pieces are contemporary aboriginal artwork so the juxtaposition would be the ancient in a modern world: na茂ve and innocent figurative pieces with modern fabric prints, or seemingly primitive people with advanced lights of consciousness in the paintings (ie: light above their heads or their third eyes) or native drums with inspirational word definitions with both a modern English version and a Native American quote indicating either differing or deeper views of the same wordor a shaman gourd with copper, horse hair, and face paint in unlikely colours."
Goodfellow, who has been doing art part-time for 12 years, has many passions including collecting all things shiny, old or curious. She is consistently augmenting her skills working at new careers as a team builder, registered craniosacral therapist, registered professional counselor, life purpose coach, and artistand she loves traveling to exotic places.
Currently, Goodfellow also has paintings on display at NK'Meep Winery (North America's only Native-run winery) in Osoyoos.
For more information contact her at:[email protected]
Opening Reception on Saturday, June 12, 1 - 3 p.m. at the Foyer Gallery in the Squamish Public Library.
