Although best known for her contributions as a printmaker and producer of virtuoso drawings, sculpture holds an important place in the practice of Montreal artist Betty Goodwin. The body and its frailty, primary subjects of her work in other media, are also prevalent in Goodwin’s sculpture. Her sculpture is spare and iconic, and thus convays a quiet sense of resolve.

Support for a Blue Heart speaks at once literally and symbolically of physical and emotional vulnerability. A modeled wax heart is suspended roughly the height of a standing viewer’s heart on an armature of two vertical rods, offering the possibility of identification through a process of haptic empathy. The result is a startling awareness of the missing flesh of the implied body: the sheer exposure of the malleable heart, stained blue, is suggestive of sorrow, sickness and death. Goodwin’s work explores the nature of suffering with solemn dignity.