Spanning a career of nearly 60 years, Brenda Goodman is regarded by both peers and developing artists as a “painter’s painter” for her steadfast insistence on staying true to her vision and her inventive handling of her medium. Born in Detroit in 1943, Goodman received a BFA from Detroit’s College of Creative Studies, which also awarded her with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2017. In 1976 she moved to the Bowery in NYC where she lived and worked for the next 33 years until moving to the Catskills in 2009. Her career has included 46 solo shows throughout the country and her work is in numerous museums including MOMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her work was included in the 1979 Whitney Biennial and the 2015 American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational, where she received the Award in Art, and she received fellowships from the NEA and the NY Foundation for the Arts. She has been represented by Sikkema Molloy Jenkins Gallery since 2019, where her current show is up from February 12 to March 21, 2026.
