Betty Roodish Goodwin, OC (March 19, 1923 – December 1, 2008) was a Canadian printmaker, sculptor, painter, and installation artist.
Born in Montreal the only child of Romanian immigrants Betty loved to paint and draw as a child, and was much encouraged by her mother to pursue art. Goodwin's father, a factory owner in Montreal, died when she was 9. After graduating from high school, she studied design at Valentine's Commercial School of Art in Montreal, then launched her career as a painter and printmaker in the late 1940s. In the 1960s, she enrolled in a printmaking class with Yves Gaucher at Sir George Williams University in Montreal. Dissatisfied with her work, she destroyed most of it and in 1968 she limited herself to drawing.She was married to Martin Goodwin, a civil engineer (d. 2008). Their son Paul died at 30 of a drug overdose.
Betty Goodwin used a large variety of media, including collage, sculpture, printmaking, painting and drawing, assemblage and etchings. Her subject matter almost always revolves around the human form and deals with it in a highly emotional way. Many of her ideas came from clusters of photographs, objects or drawings on the walls in her studio. She also used the “germ” of ideas that are left after being erased from a work. During the 1950's and 60's Goodwin painted still-lifes. She also depicted scenes of Montreal's Jewish Community. She became interested in found objects, particularly how they represent traces of life. She created copper plate impressions of items of clothing to produce a series of etchings, entitled Vest, which gained international attention. Goodwin created a series of wall hangings entitled Tarpaulin from 1972-`974, which she reworked to shape into sculptures and collages. Over a period of six years beginning in 1982, Goodwin explored the human form in her drawing series Swimmers, this project used graphite, oil pastels and charcoal on translucent Mylar. The large-scale drawings depict solitary floating or sinking bodies, suspended in space. In 1986, to show the interaction of human figures she created her series Carbon using charcoal and wax to create drawings.Wikipedia
