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Goodwin, Betty
Support for a Blue Heart
1996

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 or, rather, impaled at roughly the height of the viewer’s heart on an armature of two vertical rods, prompting immediate 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.

 
Goodwin, Betty
born Montreal, Quebec 1923; died Montreal, Quebec 2008
Support for a Blue Heart
1996
pigment; oil stick; wax; steel
216.0 x 35.0 x 19.0 cm
Purchase funded by Gelmont Foundation in Honour of Janet M. Brooke, Director, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2002
45-007

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