Finding beauty in the details of ordinary things: that is the theme of Tulsa artist Jeanie Gooden’s new book Findings: Translations, released in November.
“I love the small things,” Gooden says. “I love to encourage people to look around them. Somebody might be looking at a waterfall and I might be looking at a rock in the other direction because I like the pattern on it. I’m very attuned to details.”
Gooden has been living and working between Tulsa and the colonial city of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, for the past 20 years. She says it’s the vibrant people, music, colors, food and culture – but also the earthy, even gritty imperfection – that have made the Mexican city a place of inspiration for her work.
“I love the vibrancy of Mexico,” Gooden says, “and the simple things about it. It’s a very innovative country, but juxtaposed to that is the very simple, basic idea that everything’s useful. Take care of it. Patch it up. Use it again. Mexico is so rich in the old ways of re-purposing and salvaging. That’s what you’ll see in my work, examples of these inspirations.”
Old mops leaning against a wall and rusted trash cans sitting in an alley are transferred by Gooden’s hand to canvases in art galleries. Patches of metal, stitching and layering canvases and textiles are all things that influenced the artist, but her often large scale mixed media works actually started stateside.
“Years ago, I sold a painting called Torn to a designer in Tulsa,” Gooden says. “It fell off the wall at a party in her home and tore the canvas. I was already living down here [in Mexico] at the time, and I started remembering markets and how they sometimes crudely sew things together. So I just pulled [the painting] together with a bunch of cotton thread and stitched it up, and I’ve never stopped stitching.”
Gooden says the piece even became an analogy for healing and repair.
“There’s always some reason for the things I do,” she says.
Delving into new forms of art requires a bravery that Gooden says she tries to embody and impart to others.
“As long as you’re fearful, you’re going to stay safe in anything,” Gooden says. “I happen to be a painter. But you’ve got to be willing to fail in art or anything. I think you have to be willing for it to be rotten. You can’t get good at anything unless you are bad at it first. I’ve taken a lot of risks in my life, so I guess that’s just the way I look at things.”
While her 240-page book of full color images and photographs reflects her own creative process, Gooden says she hopes to inspire others to find their passion.
“Look around you,” she says. “Your inspiration is waiting just beside you. It’s the simplest message in the world. I just happen to have a visual story that unfolded over 20 something years that makes it easier to see. You may cook or make music or you may be a computer programmer – but you’re making connections no matter what.”
