Gohar GODDARD

“I am first and foremost a colourist. When I start painting, I begin by mixing colours, trying our new combinations of tints. I apply layer upon layer of these experimental pigments to the canvas, build up a texture that appeals to the touch. Only when, almost as a happy coincidence, certain combinations seem to work do I move to the next stage, staying with these colours but concentrating on the architecture of the paintings, line, shapes, and forms that give greater interest to the colours themselves. This is the drawing stage. I make marks, I try to impose some degree of order, I scratch hieroglyphics, I smudge the paint, I roll on new layers of pigment, all the time trying to create the greatest amount of visual interest with the least means. I am happy when the painting provides a pleasure that is difficult to explain. I believe that the eye understands when a painting is finished, even though the mind is uncertain."

On first looking at Gohar’s paintings you feel a tranquility and simplicity in her work. Her combination of colours and textures give away her background as a textile designer and like textiles they are tactile and considered. On looking deeper you understand the structure and design which, to me, shows an influence of the St Ives Group; it wasn’t until talking to Gohar about her work and her life she revealed her exotic background of growing up as one of four daughters of Persian parents living in Lahore, Karachi, Paris and London, (she was even taught to knit by Irish Nuns in a Himalayan convent school in Kashmir) that you begin to see how wide a field Gohar has had available to her to subconsciously reap ideas.

During the 1980’s Gohar established and ran a unique textile, yarns and knitwear business called Ziggurat and continues today with her ‘English Weather’ label specializing in unusual cashmere designs. Ceramics has also featured in her busy life when during the 1990s she worked in porcelain and clay; the recurring themes of texture and design seemed to dominate her creativity .  As a child Gohar was facinated by art and painting especially the work of Matisse, Klee and Tapies , but it was in the 1990s following an art study and industry tour in Cornwall that she became devoted to the work of William Scott, Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton. She resolved to teach her self to paint and explore the same aesthetic themes that had occupied her in her knitwear and ceramics: the physicality of the medium, the tactile quality of ordinary materials, aesthetics of still ness and calm and the beauty of careful colour combinations.

Viewing Gohar's work is therapeutic, a sequence of simplicity and meditation on shape and colour, it is no wonder that many of her works have been bought by private collectors and she has been commissioned to create pieces for corporate settings.

Paintings