Artworks by Janis Goodman

I have been working professionally as a printmaker for over 20 years. My etchings reveal my preoccupation with the repetitive patterns formed by roofs, windows and chimneys and how these contrast with the organic forms of plants and especially birds. The work is very detailed and atmospheric – each etching is a small narrative. I find it hard to describe where I get my ideas from or what makes me chose one perspective over another. Often the choice is visceral – I just know that this is the view or collection of shapes which I need to reassemble. I like combining the manmade with the organic. and particularly enjoy working on locations where nature is taking over the built environment. Birds populate and enliven both my pictures and my life. Most of my work concerns places I know well that are an integral part of my mind’s eye, either where I live in Leeds or places I visit often. Although I enjoy representing something again and again, I also like to stop and reconfigure.

I am attracted to the unusual in the midst of the everyday - I hope to avoid sentimentality but focus on the quirky and the irregular.