"For Sidney Goodman, drawing remains at the heart of his artistic practice. Now as always, his drawings in pastel, charcoal, and watercolor present the artist’s formal and thematic concerns in their full glory. The most recent drawings, some conceived autonomously and others in relation to oil paintings, expand Goodman’s investigation of the human theatre. Confining himself to familiar people and settings — the artist, his wife and children, a small variety of ordinary clothing, furniture and toys — Goodman dramatizes scale, perspective, and framing to confront himself and his viewers with circumstances highly unfamiliar. Within a single drawing, juxtapositions of color and black and white filled space and blank, create tensions and ambiguities that leave few observers complacent. The intensity of Goodman’s vision draws us into a haunting world that refuses interpretation as much as it refuses to forget."

 

Ann Temkin for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, June 1993​