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EAAF member Rosemary Goodenough is an artist, designer and writer of the hooray-HOORAY-HORATIO The Jolly Hedgehog children’s books. She lives in an ancient house in west Norfolk with her husband, the photographer Michael Waller-Bridge. Occasional collaborators, they also work on their individual projects in their separate studios.
We asked Rosemary to describe her work -
I am a sculptor and painter who paints in oils on board or panel with knives and cloths (never brushes). I work in the contemporary impressionist tradition, although my works in charcoal tend to be slightly more figurative than my paintings or sculptures.
What keeps you up at night?
Fretting when I know a painting is about to find its direction and longing to be at my easel but knowing that I need to respect my work by starting feeling fresh after a good night’s sleep.
What is your favourite part of your practice?
The moment (which cannot be forced) when I’m painting, sculpting or drawing with charcoal and something takes over completely. For lack of a better way of expressing it, I suppose in a way it’s the moment when I stop being Rosemary and become an artist: it is not me that creates my work but this other person I become in that moment. For example, I was painting a ballet dancer and was so absorbed in my work that I forgot to give her a break and was mortified when I realised it. When I apologised, she said “don’t worry at all, you must not forget that I am also looking at you and I noticed there was a moment something happened to you, when you stopped being Rosemary and became an artist”. As you can imagine it completely freaked me out as I had no idea that something so internal and intimate to me was actually visible to others!
Which artist/artists inspire you most?
I take inspiration from many sources. For contemporaries it has to be Anselm Keiffer, Frank Auerbach, Stephen Chambers and fellow EAAF members, Gerard Stamp and Nessie Stonebridge. Historically, both Cranachs and both Holbeins, Sir Thomas Lawrence, JMW Turner, John Singer Sargent, LS Lowry, Francis Bacon and of course the artists whose names, gender and motivations are unknown to us who painted the deeply moving images on the walls of the Chauvet Caves 35,000 years ago. Then there are the Scottish Colourists and Hokusai, really the list is endless and for me a nearly impossible question to answer as one never stops looking and one never stops learning.
If you could step inside an artwork for a day which would it be & why?
The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger, painted in 1533. For the weirdness and immense skill in his rendition of the anamorphic skull, which has vast presence at the bottom of the painting and which is only revealed to be a skull when one looks at it from the side rather than head-on. The fact that it is a double portrait but with a series of highly symbolic still-lifes within it. It’s an incredibly complex work and a perfect showcase for Holbein’s skill in painting fabrics and objects with many different textures and forms. I could go on and on - the two globes are extraordinarily beautifully formed, the music paper, the polyhedral sundial, the whole painting is remarkable and for nearly 500 years has never ceased to fascinate both scholars and artists alike.
To find out more about Rosemary's work CLICK HERE
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