The Beauty Behind Silence with Catherine Goodman
Silent Music was on view until April 12 at Hauser & Wirth in Manhattan.
Blood Orange, 2024. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Catherine Goodman doesn’t just paint pictures. She creates quiet worlds that pull you in. Her work feels like a conversation you didn’t know you needed to have, one that starts in silence and lingers in memory. When she talks about her creative process, there’s a calm intensity to it. For her, painting isn’t just a visual act—it’s emotional, even spiritual. Silence plays a significant role. It’s where ideas begin, where feelings take shape before they ever touch the canvas. She says that silence helps her tap into something deeper, allowing her work to echo the kind of emotional pull you’d expect from music, not through sound, but through feeling.
Her latest exhibition, Silent Music at Manhattan’s Hauser & Wirth, marks a big moment for her—not just professionally, but personally too. New York has always been a muse, with its energy, culture, and endless visual noise. It’s a place that constantly feeds her creatively, especially the museums and galleries she’s drawn to, like MoMA. Goodman’s paintings tend to resist neat definitions.
They’re often abstract but grounded in emotional opposites, light and dark, clarity and ambiguity. She’s not trying to capture the world as it looks but as it feels. And in doing so, her art becomes a space for universal emotion, a kind of visual music that speaks to something beyond words. For her, the act of painting is deeply personal. It’s a way of understanding herself, a therapeutic process where unexpected truths show up with each brushstroke.
Lately, she’s been leaning even more into the mysterious, exploring how memory, especially the subconscious, shapes what ends on the canvas. It’s not always planned. It’s not always clear. But that’s what makes it powerful. Her work keeps evolving, pushing against the boundaries of what contemporary painting can be, inviting viewers to slow down, feel deeply, and maybe even see a bit of themselves reflected.
Lago, 2024. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Your new Silent Music exhibition is showcased at Manhattan's renowned Hauser and Wirth. Can you share what this moment means to you and how the exhibition reflects your artistic journey?
Having a show in New York is really exciting for me. It’s a city that always inspires me, especially with the contemporary work I see in the galleries. I love places like MoMA, The Met, and all the galleries around the city—they always leave me feeling inspired and ready to get back to the studio. New York has this incredible energy, and culturally, it feeds everyone in different ways, not just through visual arts but also through theater, music, and performance. It’s a place that constantly fuels creativity.
That being said, I don’t think I could live there full-time—it’s just so stimulating! But London is my city. If New York were mine, I’m sure I’d adapt in time. I’ve always loved New York and traveled a lot throughout my life, but it’s one of those cities that stays with you. So, to be able to show in Chelsea now feels like a real full-circle moment.
The title Silent Music is intriguing—how does it capture the essence of this body of work, and what role does sound or silence play in your creative process?
I have a quote on the wall of my studio that says, ‘Make friends with silence.’ For me, silence is essential when I’m working. While I might put on music or listen to a podcast when I’m doing other tasks in the studio, when I’m painting, I need silence to really access depth. To reach the essence of what I’m trying to express, I need to go deep, and any audible distractions prevent me from doing that.
I’ve always found silence to be a powerful tool. It helps me connect with what’s inside and dive into the layers of the work. There’s also a quote by the 13th-century mystic Meister Eckhart that says, ‘The name of God is silence,’ and I really resonate with that. For me, silence is sacred. As I get older, I see it as a form of solitude in the studio—a space that feels like a cave where I can retreat and connect with the work.
When did you find this concept, and what made you decide, ‘Yes, I'm going to take this further. This deserves to be seen and heard by millions of people.’
What I meant by the title of the show, Silent Music is that I think music is something that has the ability to stir us to feelings and emotions that are universal, you know, but everybody has a unique response to it. Even if everyone's dancing to the same song, everyone’s in a different space. It connects to different bits of us. I think it’s the same with painting if you stay with a painting. It has that ability, too. So, it may not be making an audible sound, but it has the power of music. And it’s silent somehow.
Pahari Picnic, 2024. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Has your art ever revealed something about yourself that you hadn't realized before?
Yes, absolutely. Every day, something new is revealed. There’s a quote from the British writer E.M. Forster that I really love: ‘How do I know what I think until I see what I say?’ I find that so true for painting. I don’t always know what I feel about a subject or even what the subject is until I begin working on it. I believe there’s real power in the act of creation itself.
Often, when I step into the studio, I don’t feel inspired, but once I start, something emerges. The painting begins to ‘speak’ to me silently, guiding me somewhere unexpected. The creative process is full of mystery, and we never really know where it will lead. Whether we’re cooking, gardening, or painting, if it doesn’t surprise you, it can quickly become monotonous. You need that sense of losing control, of being out of your depth, to keep the process alive. As David Bowie once said, ‘You have to be a little bit out of your depth all the time.’ That’s where curiosity and magic happen.
What does your work reveal about you that words cannot?
We don’t really know how we’re seen in the world. We don’t know how we appear to other people, but with painting, especially the big abstract works I do, people often say there’s beauty and cruelty together, lightness and darkness. I think those opposites, those polarities, are surprising. So, I suppose that’s what my work reveals about me—those different facets of who I am.
Also, it’s really important to me that the painting feels like it’s found some beauty somewhere. I really believe in chasing beauty. It doesn’t always arrive on its own. Sometimes, you really have to fight for it. For example, today, I was painting all day, and there was one piece I couldn’t resolve. Then, about half an hour ago, I went for it, and now I think it’s finished. You really have no control over that moment.
Do you see your work as a form of healing or release?
Both, really. As artists, we often have a particular sensitivity that can make life challenging. I’m very sensitive to light and sound and find it difficult to be in crowded spaces or even take the tube. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to manage this sensitivity, but painting has been a deeply healing space for me. It’s a form of therapy that allows me to go inward and find what I want to express. In doing that, there’s also release—being able to express something that’s been inside for years. It’s a way of saying, ‘This is what I wanted to say all this time.’
Red Wing, 2024. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
How might your approach to memory in place in painting challenge the traditional notion of presentation in contemporary art?
Memory is a strange thing, isn’t it? It’s often tied to smell, vibration, and sometimes even sensations we’re not fully aware of. When I’m painting, I often find myself unexpectedly transported back to memories—like being on a bus in India at midnight, surrounded by sleeping people and a specific kind of light. These memories can surface without me even realizing they were there, but once they do, they become crystal clear.
It’s fascinating because these memories feed into my work, adding richness to the painting. It’s almost like a tapestry, where different images and ideas from my unconscious surface get woven, creating a variety that shapes the final piece. You think you’re painting one thing, and then a memory appears, taking the work in a new direction. It challenges the idea of traditional presentation, allowing the work to evolve and surprise both the artist and the viewer.
I’m sure people have had many different interpretations of your work. Have any of them surprised you?
What’s interesting is that when I was in New York, everyone was very kind, congratulating me and saying how amazing my work was. But there wasn’t much dialogue about what people actually saw or felt—except for the young adults with Down syndrome that I worked with one day. They were so open about their interpretations, saying things like, ‘I can see a fire,’ ‘I see a mountain,’ or ‘I see this or that.’
Their responses were very candid, and I really appreciated that. Sometimes, people are afraid of getting it ‘wrong,’ especially when they don’t know the artist. It can be intimidating. If you and I were standing together in front of my paintings, I would ask you, ‘What do you think of this one?’ That kind of intimate exchange is important, but it’s hard to achieve in a larger setting, you know?
Your work is truly mesmerizing—some even remind me of memories I have from my childhood. It brings a sense of nostalgia, a sentimental warmth. I love how each piece evokes deep contemplation on how we, as humans, can access our spiritual essence through visionary thinking. The pieces that resonated with me the most are Night Beekeeper II, Sing While You Sleep, and Great Hall I. If these pieces could speak, what would you think they'd say?
Thank you so much for that beautiful reflection. I’m truly moved to hear that my work evokes such deep, personal memories for you. When it comes to the pieces you mentioned, I think they would each speak in their own unique way, reflecting the layers and nuances that exist within them. Art, especially abstract painting, allows for a variety of interpretations depending on who is engaging with it.
If these pieces could speak, I imagine they might convey different messages to different people, shaped by their individual experiences and emotions. The beauty of art, for me, lies in this open-ended dialogue—where each viewer brings their own life into the conversation. As for what they might say, I think they’d invite people into a space of quiet contemplation, offering a moment of stillness, an opportunity to reconnect with the self and the world around us.
Macondo, 2024. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
How do you envision it shaping your personal growth? And as an artist contributing to the legacy you hope to leave behind?
I think I’ve learned through teaching that if we really use our imagination and think about our ambitions in life… mine aren’t about having a show at MoMA or things like that. My ambitions are about the work itself—what I want to say with it. The future is always uncertain; we can’t really see into it. But I think it’s important to imagine it. When you imagine the future, you open the doors a little bit. It’s not about money, power, or any of that—it’s about understanding what we’re here to do. It’s about making a mark. That mark will change and evolve over time, but that’s the essence of it.
The piece that really resonated with me is The Night Beekeeper. Something about it keeps pulling me in every time I look at it. I also kept coming back to Sing While You Sleep and Great Hall—those three pieces just really captivated me. There’s something in the colors and the motion; it almost feels like it’s speaking to something from my childhood—those quiet moments when your parents would watch you sleep or something along those lines. I wanted to ask you if these pieces could speak to you. What do you think they'd say?
Oh, wow, what a beautiful question. I find it impossible to answer, but it’s one I’ll keep thinking about. It’s the kind of question that doesn’t necessarily need an answer. I was reading about the Rothko Chapel in Texas the other day, and someone asked Mark Rothko what his paintings were about. He said, ‘I can’t tell you what they’re about. If you can’t see it, no words of mine will explain it.’ And that really resonated with me. I think that's why you do the work in the first place. My answer would probably be that each piece would say something different to every person because it’s a space of contemplation. And we’re all in that space, each of us uniquely.
As your work continues to evolve and resonate with new audiences, how do you envision it shaping your personal growth as an artist and contributing to the legacy you hope to leave behind?
Through teaching, I’ve realized something important: if we really use our imagination, we can think about our ambitions. For me, it's not about being recognized at MoMA or doing big, flashy things. My ambitions are centered around the work itself—what I want to communicate through it. The future is always a bit unclear, but I think it’s important to imagine it. When we do, we open the doors to possibility. It's not about money or power but about understanding what we are here to contribute.
