Josie Goddard

I am a painter working between London and Florence. I received my formal training in portraiture at Charles H. Cecil Studios and am currently finishing my Masters degree at City & Guilds of London Art School.

I work solely from life, bringing my friends and family into the studio and surrounding myself with strange objects that I find in junk shops or in the landscape. These objects become symbols like in Religious or allegorical paintings, where objects are used as indicators into a story or character. My paintings are located in the domestic space amongst loved ones when we are at our most candid. A fleeting encounter with a butterfly, a suspended bird skull or a fragment of a veiny wrist clutching flowers, my paintings are at once intimate and strange but always rooted in nature.

Borrowing directly from the old masters, I hope to create a language that is both timeless yet personal. The elastic nature of oil paint creates a dichotomy between image and abstraction. In work by Velázquez or Hals for example, a hand or fabric can suddenly blink out of recognition and returns to textural paint. Through my background in my classical training, I aim to test this boundary, delighting in paint’s capability to emulate nature, losing and finding form in the liquid colour.

Links

Website

Instagram