There is a lot of superb contemporary realism and figurative art being made by thoughtful individuals, one of whom is Miles Cleveland Goodwin
I almost titled this “The One-Man Southern Gothic Revival of Miles Cleveland Goodwin,” but that would dumb it down to something to do with style. There’s so much more here.
Born in 1980, in Biloxi, Mississippi, Miles Cleveland Goodwin spent his youth in the American south, and currently lives in Georgia. A show of his work at Anima Mundi Gallery in England closed earlier this month.
Goodwin‘S paintings can seem like outsider folk art from an alternative timeline. In this world, nature’s mysteries are prodded with a candid, disarming amalgam of surrealism, metaphysics, and the ambient symbolism of dreams. There is a raw homespun sorcery in this work, a fractured poetry, visions born of the low magic of stones and strange animal behavior, disjointed stories a child might sing to itself in the dark.
Miles Cleveland Goodwin, Strange Angels, 2024, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
While “Strange Angels” (above), may allude to “Biblically accurate” descriptions of angels in the Books of the Prophets and Revelations, Cleveland’s otherworldly beings manifest in a realm between the natural and the supernatural. It is dusk, with a pale crescent moon. Two hovering “angels,” one with an owl’s head, and the other part bat part crane with the head of a sheep, carry between them a pale robed figure, hands folded in deep prayer. A strange composite animal (part cow and part bear or dog?) gazes into a swampy pool of water and reeds. The composition recalls Renaissance depictions of the Annunciation or Judgment Day.
Other works choose realism to tap into those depths where psychology and nature’s unruly truths entwine. The painting “Beautiful Dying Man” presents us with an unflinching yet deeply compassionate portrait of a dying man. He struggles to move or stay, his face ashen and his limbs wasted away by illness.
Miles Cleveland Goodwin, “Beautiful Dying Man,” 2023, oilon linen, 24 x 18 in., Valley House Gallery (Dallas)
The main figure, like the painting as a whole, is as if pared down by, and grinding up against, the most basic, inescapable realities, but not without grace and mystery. Behind the man a dark figure is partly visible – is this a friend, a relative or caretaker? Is it a personification of death (in keeping with the black … is that a bathrobe?) Is it the man’s soul or his younger, healthier self hovering behind him? By obscuring the second man’s face, the artist leaves us, as does the real-life the presence of death, wondering, unsure, uneasy with unanswered questions.
About this painting and the title, Goodwin told us, “this work is about the process my uncle went through dying from lung cancer. It was ‘beautiful’ in the sense that it was aimed at the idea of cherishing the natural, genetic rules of the universe, which of course is the death of a body. My man’s soul was intact.”
Miles Cleveland Goodwin, The Offering, 2024, oil on linen, 17 3/4 x 27 3/8 inches
Goodwin writes as well, as evidenced by his website. “My painting was born in the cypress swamps of Mississippi, where I was conceived, under a white heron’s wing and a drunken parade,” his artist’s statement declares. “The stories of slaves and farming, the seasons burning with colors and feelings, that resignation to the idea we were different. I found it later on the bottom of the Chattahoochee River, floating by a bible and a dream. Those brown waters against the warmth of fall leaves would ignite my love for expressionism and poetry.”
Miles Cleveland Goodwin, Bat hanging from bird nest, 2024, oil on linen, 16 x 12 inches
Goodwin continues, “The American South is hauntingly beautiful; it could supply a person novels, paintings, and songs for eternity. In winter the mountains were on fire with white. White against dark wiry cedars, against the black of my paint. And in the summer endless patches of Queen Anne’s lace, chimney swifts flying just below the old train bridges, the shimmer of brown trout at the surface of the cold river waters. In fall the maples melted between the old brick and wood of abandoned churches. I could start to hear mice in the walls, horses in their stalls fattening up, a whisper of death.”
In a recent catalogue essay, Bradley Sumrall writes: “The stories Goodwin weaves through his paintings resonate with the Southern Gothic literary tradition – stories of family, religion, race, community, morality, and the land. They are tales of a place steeped in tradition, filled with natural beauty and haunted by the past – a past of lost empire, of lost causes, of old cruelties. Painting both the real world around him and the startling world of his dreams, his surfaces are saturated with a deep sense of place and the burden of history.”
Miles Cleveland Goodwin, The Sacred, 2024, oil on linen, 30 x 40 inches
Sing praises to earth’s creatures who have endured millions of deaths.
To the real gods who roam this land creating music from breaths.
It is our affairs that ignite fires of beauty from hand,
May we withdraw for a time to let them heal this land.
It is the purity of flesh and the warmth of fur,
Or an unusual offering causing the soul to stir.
The bone, the antler, the lungs and the teeth,
Form a gentle maiden and a death of a thief.
Lost magic created by ages of innocence,
Sculpts a thick atmosphere of lust and omnipotence.
Let their love help me create the work in which I try,
From the soul and the skin to whisper a faint goodbye.
—Miles Cleveland Goodwin
Connect with the artist and see more of his figurative art at www.milesclevelandgoodwin.com.
Cleveland’s painting of his uncle, “Beautiful Dying Man,” was recently featured in our sister publication Fine Art Connoisseur. Fine Art Connoisseur serves art collectors and enthusiasts with innovative articles about representational paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints historical and contemporary, American and European. It covers the museums, galleries, fairs, auction houses, and private collections where great art is found. Check it out online or start your subscription to the gorgeous print edition here.
