"About the Artist"

Carolyn S. Goodridge

BIO

Born on October 21, 1960, in Port of Spain, Trinidad, West Indies, Carolyn Goodridge immigrated to the Unites States in 1963 with her family – parents Sheila and Henley, two older brothers, Dave and Tarance.  Her younger sister, Kim was born soon after. Carolyn was taken under the wing of her paternal grandmother, Beryl Odell, a pastor of the Power House of Prayer, Pentecostal Church in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. During the next 10 years, Carolyn was introduced to a heavily spiritual way of life through her grandmother’s direction. A great deal of importance was given to the power of healing through inner power and religious focus. Carolyn developed an interest in the arts at the age of 10, first writing short stories, plays and poems and then expressing herself through songs for the piano and guitar and later focusing on drawing.

After the death of her 70 year her grandmother who died in 1976, Carolyn’s religious direction shifted away from Western theologies. She developed skill in Yoga under the guidance of her teacher Ma Prem at the Carnegie Hall Yoga Studio; became widely read in the Eastern religious philosophies of India, and landed in the Korean Zen Buddhist tradition. At age 19, she left home to live in a Chogye International Zen Center in Chelsea Manhattan, and studied Zen meditation with Zen Master Seung Sahn, founder of the Kwan Um School of Zen, where Carolyn is presently a Dharma Teacher In Training.

Carolyn’s formal art education began around 1984 at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York as a night student in textile design. During the day she worked as a computer secretary, temping for the major brokerage houses of Wall Street from 1983 through 1990. At FIT Carolyn discovered her inexhaustible love of painting. Carolyn gave birth to twin girls, Alexis and Alana in 1988.   Carolyn left New York to pursue full time matriculation at the University of Florida in Gainesville with her daughters. She spent the next seven years living as an art student, extensively exhibiting her work on campus and in neighboring towns and traveling to places such as India, Sri Lanka, Germany, Ireland, Belize, Venezuela, Canary Islands. Carolyn was awarded an undergraduate degree in Painting from the University of Florida in 1993, and a Master’s in Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1997.

Upon returning to the northeast in the summer 1997, Carolyn and her daughters lived for a short time at the Kwan Um School’s Head Zen Temple in Cumberland, Rhode Island, just a few miles from Providence. She returned to Brooklyn that winter, and soon launched the website "AbstractPaintings.Com".  In 1998 Carolyn founded the company Whole Point Technologies, Inc., now re-named Art Neuroscience, Inc.  which focuses on fine art  for adults and young children.  Goodridge moved to Raleigh, North Carolina  in the summer of 2005, dba Art Impact, Inc.   It's mission is to realize a synergistic relationship between artists, non-profit organizations and local businesses for social and economic improvement.

The abstract paintings produced by Goodridge reflect her artistic progression from realism to abstraction.  This critical shift came in 1992, toward the end of her undergraduate years at UF.   An avid student of art history, Goodridge was inspired by the mystical works of color field artists Mark Tobey, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, the whimsical master colorist Hans Hofmann, the musically oriented, German Expressionist Vassily Kandinsky, the exploratory work on dreams and the collective unconscious by Paul Kleé, and genius of musician John Cage.  Studying their works had a liberating impact on Goodridge.  She began to realize a freedom and reconnection with her love of color and music, legacies of her West Indian culture.  The imagery also reflects her background in Zen meditation where spontaneity is key to understanding oneself. 

Goodridge began studying Eastern philosophy from the age of 12 and now brings a rich integration of spiritual philosophy, with modern and ancient psychology to the artwork.   The titles of the paintings are constructed from personal interpretations of classic texts such as the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, the Upanishads.  Titles such as Yang: The Virtue of Relationship and The Gate of Heavy Circumstance, also appeal to the intellectual side of the viewer; whereas the imagery is intended to stimulate the intuitive and emotional sensitivities. 

Using wet on wet watercolor or acrylic paint on either canvas or paper, along with oil paints, Goodridge may complete a painting in a short time, after spending months perfecting a technique and researching a topic.  The canvas is moved flat on the ground and on slopes so the paint can be shifted and organized into organic lines and patterns or biomorphic shapes. The oil paint is then introduced to act in concert with the more liquid paints as a means to practice orchestration and harmony between apparent opposites.  This process is an extension and expression of the artist’s faith that if all things are allowed to keep to their own nature, there is a way to bring harmony, beauty and transcendence to this world.  The process is the most important aspect of painting to this artist.  Click here to read about the artist's recent use  of melted beeswax (encaustic).