Painter Chrys Corn Goodman calls herself a “re-emerging artist.”
Fear can limit you. Alexander artist Chrys Corn Goodman knows this firsthand.
Growing up in San Francisco, Goodman always wanted to be an artist. As an only child, she spent many lonely hours attempting to replicate detailed illustrations of wild animals. “I found that art became my best friend,” she tells Asheville Made.
After high school, she enrolled in the San Francisco Academy of Art and began applying for an artist residency in Taos, New Mexico. But she ultimately changed paths and got a “real job” as a graphic designer.
“I now see that it was a decision based almost entirely on fear,” Goodman says, explaining she didn’t want to become a “starving artist.”
In the following years, Goodman worked a traditional 9-to-5 while painting and drawing in her free time. Then, in the late 1990s, she began pursuing her BFA at California State University, East Bay.
“There I ended up meeting my mentor, Corban LePell, who was an incredibly gifted and generous teacher,” says Goodman. “I told him I wanted to learn to paint abstractly, but I couldn’t do it in a way that didn’t look contrived and forced. He was able to push me in ways that changed how I painted and brought freedom to my expression, and I felt an authenticity in the abstraction that I began to do.”
LePell encouraged Goodman to pursue her MFA. “But instead, my life took a turn, and my personal life required all the energy and emotional space I had, and making art fell by the wayside,” she explains. “He was angry with me for wasting my talent and the time he had invested.”
It wasn’t until after Goodman relocated to Western North Carolina — a place her father’s family has called home since the 1700s — that she truly considered the weight of LePell’s words.
“I realized that I was indeed wasting what I had been given, and I really needed to be faithful with it and stop letting other things take precedence,” she says.
Today, Goodman describes herself as “an abstract figurative painter in search of vibrancy, mystery, beauty, and truth in brokenness and hope.”
Her creative process is usually chaotic and unfettered. She starts by writing words with charcoal and making bold, gestural brushstrokes with paint while blasting music to get out of her own way.
“I try not to bring any preconceived direction to my paintings, but rather surrender to the art and let it become what it wants to become, say what it wants to say,” she reveals. “It’s scary but good because it takes the element of control out of my hands.”
What results is always beautiful and, sometimes, mystical.
Her painting “Transfiguration,” for instance, began many years ago while she was working at a center for homeless youth in San Francisco.
“… I had imagined how beautiful it was going to be to share my art supplies and create art with the young people who came through,” Goodman remembers. “I set up everything I owned in this little corner of the garage and had started painting a portrait of one of them, but I had to leave for a couple of days.”
When Goodman returned, she found someone had scribbled pink graffiti over the in-progress portrait. She was furious. But she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away.
“So, I stuffed it in my portfolio case and decided I would paint over it someday,” says Goodman. “Ten years went by, and I did not look at that piece of paper.”
But one day, Goodman finally pulled the vandalized canvas out. It still evoked white-hot rage. Fueled by this anger, she decided to make it into the ugliest piece of art she possibly could.
“I threw black gesso at it,” she says. “I grabbed an old, clogged-up metal tube of nasty green paint and smeared the entire contents of it on.”
During this emotional release, figures began to take shape. First came the haloed silhouette of Jesus. Then came two other distorted figures in long robes.
“Suddenly, I realized that I had just painted the transfiguration of Jesus,” says Goodman. “If you are not familiar with that, it’s a scene in the Bible where his followers see Jesus’ appearance change into this brilliant, otherworldly thing. Moses and Elijah are talking to him, and they also have the same kind of otherworldly appearance.”
Goodman thinks a lot about the symbolism of how this painting came to be.
“It was an amazing and encouraging experience,” she says, “especially because it happened on this piece of paper that I was trying to destroy but was itself transfigured.”
In many ways, Goodman herself has experienced a similar transfiguration. No longer is she afraid to embrace her creativity. “I am a re-emerging artist,” she says. “I never know what will appear when I paint, but I have made a conscious decision to embrace the mystery and let it speak.”
Chrys Corn Goodman, Alexander, chryscorn.com. Goodman is represented by the RAD Outpost (24 North Lexington, Ave., riverartsdistrict.com). She currently has work on display at the Asheville Art Museum (2 South Pack Square, Asheville, ashevilleart.org) as part of the Asheville Strong: Celebrating Art and Community After Hurricane Helene group exhibition, which runs through May 5. She will also be showing work at the Cowee School Arts and Heritage Center (51 Cowee School Drive, Franklin, coweeschool.org) during Fragments of Hope, a show running March 3-May 23. Find her on Instagram @chryscorn.