CATHERINE GOODMAN was born in London and studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal Academy Schools. In 1987 she won the prestigious RA gold medal and in 2002 won the BP Portrait Award. Since 2005 she has been director of The Prince’s Drawing School, one of The Prince’s Charities,  which she co-founded with the mission of raising the standard of drawing. This year she has had two solo shows at the National Portrait Gallery, (“Portraits from Life”) and at Colnaghi (“Portraits from Veronese”).

 

Goodman has been visiting the Kullu Valley almost every year for the last 25 years, often standing in the same spot to paint the mountainous landscapes directly onto canvas.  Her paintings of the area are vast and full of energy, capturing the light at different times of day. Critic Rachel Campbell Johnston says of them, “From a distance you see a picture. But step closer and it disappears into a dense network of bush-strokes. The image melts into a forest of swipes and dribbles and splotches…Step back a few paces and it slowly resolves again - though perhaps not into quite the same picture that you saw the first time".