Miles Cleveland Goodwin 'In The Belly of the Beast (Searching for a Heart)'

Miles Cleveland Goodwin

In The Belly of the Beast (Searching for a Heart)

“There were two crows sat on a tree,

Lardy hip tie hoddy ho ho

There were two crows sat on a tree,

And they were black as crows could be.

Lardy hardy hip tie hoddy ho ho

The old he-crow said to his mate:

What shall we have to-day to eat?

There lies a horse in yonders lane,

Whose body has not very long been slain.

We’ll press our feet on his breast-bone,

And pick his eyes out one by one.”

‘The Two Crows’

from ‘Folk Songs of English Origin Collected

in the Appalachian Mountains’, sung by

Ada Maddox, May 3, 1918

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“I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind

earth” - William Faulkner

Miles Cleveland Goodwin’s deeply rooted

upbringing in the American South is of

inescapable significance when viewing

the extraordinary, phantasmagoric

realism and haunting naturalism of his

emotive and deeply personal artwork.

The artist frequently and unsentimentally

evokes themes of nature, presence,

solitude and mortality - conjuring a stark

and ambivalent beauty of a place that

is often simultaneously unsettling yet

deeply soulful, evocative of what the

Romantic poet Alfred Tennyson claimed

as “red in tooth and claw”. As Goodwin

humbly states “My instinct is to salvage

the forgotten and unappreciated and

elevate the discarded. I want to paint

things that have a spiritual integrity -

paintings that attempt to show the truth

of life. My painting is all that I have to let

the world know how I feel. I’m not very

good with other forms of communication.

I feel a responsibility to be a public

servant, to show you things with love, no

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doubt coloured by a melancholy soul.”

Born in Biloxi, Mississippi and now living

in Georgia in the Appalachian Mountains,

Goodwin’s form of ‘Southern Gothic’

authentically embraces familiarity with

complex mystery and contradiction,

where the seen and unseen reflect

the tension and harmony which exists

between realms of realism and the more

supernatural. Goodwin’s unsentimental

vision reflects both personal and wider

histories, truths and narratives, hinting

at underlying and persistent trauma and

struggle, where some of the ghosts that

haunt the past, linger into the present.

His symbolic visions never shy away from

darker or more uncomfortable aspects or

remnants of reality where the subject of

slavery, racism, fear of the outside world,

inequity, violence or the grotesque, could

be addressed in an attempt to seek a

form of transcendence, thus embuing his

works with an overriding sense of hope

acquired through their ultimate seeking

of truth.

Joseph Clarke, 2024

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Sunday

oil on linen, 122 x 61 cm

“This started out as a painting of an apple orchard on a clear

windy day in January. I worked with it for a while and decided it

needed some sort of figurative element in it. I initially painted a

scene with an older man as a caretaker for this girl, like a scene

in a dysfunctional family or something… it was a little creepy so I

decided to just use the girl and added some donkeys. There is such

a sense of peace I get when man and his machines aren’t about.”

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Afterlife in the Garden

oil and blood on panel, 46 x 61 cm

“I’ve had an ongoing theme in my work, over the years, of trying

to repurpose somethings existence be it symbolically or physically.

I did this in this instance with a rabbit that my dog had killed.

I wanted to capture the beautiful colour of blood, so I skinned

the rabbit on this particular panel that I had gessoed white. I

then sealed the blood with varnish and painted a memorial to the

rabbit - It’s afterlife in the garden.”

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Narcissus


“Spring wakes from its long dark sleep to cradle the figure born anew”

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Peace Without Man


“I played around with different ideas for a while and eventually

I saw something that was absent - the man, the complicated man

with his complicated inventions.”

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A Simple Life

oil on panel, 33 x 130 cm

“This piece was painted on an antique headboard as a symbol of

domestic union. It’s a painting about the life that I want with my

partner, a union in and with the simplicity of nature. A life that

feeds the soul.”

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Crow Spirit


“My neighbour down the road shoots the crows that get into his

corn. He then hangs them from a nearby branch to warn the other

birds to stay away. I took a couple of pictures of it to reuse in this

painting. I want it to know, which it probably never will, that it

lives a little more in a painting of mine.”

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Cathedral of the Woods

oil on linen 76 x 102 cm

“This painting is about the beauty of nature, and the immense

spirituality that can be found with it.”

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God Breathed


“As with many of my paintings, I learn new things about them over

time… this is particularly true with this one. At first I wanted

simply to paint the tension of the space between a sleeping wolf

and an unknowing lamb and his guardian. Then I began to see that

they could both be aware of each other and that what was existing

in the space is peace… true peace. I purchased an arched framed

mirror from an antique shop in Baltimore that I repurposed to be

this painting by cutting a panel for the frame.”

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Night Watch


“I wanted to experiment with painting something at night, guided

by the dim light of the moon. It was a great joy to do so. This is my

hound dog Venus protecting the cows that we know from down the

road. I recently found out that she is three part hound.”

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Deposition of the Church

mixed media on linen, 76 x 102 cm

“I was raised within the hypocrisy of the southern baptist church.

When one goes through the roller coaster of being brought up

within this, mixed with ones own progressive adolescent thinking

one becomes crucified in a way. The painting fuses the body of the

church with the cloth which carries you down from the cross that

they built.”

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Country Church


“My uncle had a farm in north Mississippi for a while, and on that

farm before he had it, years back, lived a family of slaves. The tiny

house they lived in was 5 foot by nothing yet still had remnants

within which were rotting away deep in the pines. When I visited

him I would always go to this abandoned house and gather things

that I could reuse. The particular shirt that forms the body of the

church in the painting was found in the wall. Their house became

a church of sorts to my creativity. The graveyard around the church

in the painting was fashioned after a church graveyard about 10

miles down the road from it.”

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A Corpse of Lightning


“Stagnant lightning is both awe inspiring and terrifying to me.

The use of the black line is an abstract feeling represented in a

literal way.”

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Lightning


”This painting came about while I was watching a prank show

filmed in Nairobi. I saw this woman sitting on a bench. Her

expression, the colour of her clothes and the beautiful richness of

her skin against the white of the bench she sat on were all visually

inspiring. I took a screen shot and painted her from that. I made up

the background with that bolt of lightning which seems significant

although I can’t quite find the words as to why. Lightning is a

beautiful situation in nature where the effect comes from the

heavens down towards the earth.”

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Old Man & The Sea


“Old Man and the Sea is a portrait of my uncle who was dying from

lung cancer, hence the holes in his torso where the feeding tubes

were placed. He died within days of me taking the photograph that

this painting was made from. His strength always amazed me in

life and all the more so in death. This is part memorial to him. The

background is from a picture I took of the Atlantic Ocean on a trip

I took to see my father for the last time… I wanted to intertwine

these two worlds… where both of my father figures reside. There

is something in the fragility of the body as it reaches its end that

was quite beautiful - the bluish red and magenta veins wrapping

around skin seeming to fade to white. The battle for the spiritual

seems to be lifelong. It’s amazing to me that everyone dies.”

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Night & Day


“It just came to be, the day, the cat… the ruler of the sun. The

raven, the ruler of the night closest to the moon. Both the most

necessary of relationship.”

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Planting Teeth


“For years I’ve had ideas where figures or forms are draped in long

pieces of cloth that cover their whole bodies leaving only the face

visible. I assume offering some form of protection. It came to me

one day to do that with a human skull. As I worked unconsciously

the teeth began to fall out so I thought we could plant them in to

the earth. I started this idea as an etching instead of a painting. I

own a small press which I dabble in from time to time, usually in

the summer when its warm out because my etching chemicals are on

a back porch housed in a 1960s green oven.”

....

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Funeral (Carrying Sticks)


“We had a service for my uncle Eugene under an old oak tree in the

rain. Everyone was wet and cold. We all began throwing his ashes

on the land, where some even coated the Springer Spaniels, Buddy

and Duke. In the painting I put the family in a grave yard that

exists at the entrance to my current neighbourhood.”

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Contemporary Painting


“This piece is about art. I wanted to make a symbolic painting about

something that is both precious to me and at continual risk. If you

compare a painting from say 1880 to one from the present you will

often see a huge discrepancy which could be seen as the presence or

absence of soul, something innate which is achieved through craft

and openness. This is often now compensated for by something more

cynical, ambivalent or throwaway. In the painting the infant is a

symbol of this innate innocence and potential, without layers and

within nature. Which is something to be cherished, yet no one is

there to guard and protect it from the flies which contaminate this

purity. The infant is at further risk of being drowned or washed

away by the waters of ambivalence. This suggests something about

the digital age that we find ourselves in and highlights something

of what we must protect.”

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Hallucinations


“This painting owes its genesis to a painting by Huges Merle titled

‘The Lunatic of Etretat’ painted in 1871 where in the painting

the troubled subject cradles an inmate object as if it is an infant.

In my painting, I used an hallucination to reflect the subject

confused twisted mind. The scene is late autumn in the southern

Appalachians. I’m still learning about this one...”

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Illumination


“I enjoy trying to create a new concept from a ubiquitous symbol.

Sometimes it seems to help me to see things in a new light. In a

more helpful way one needs to change their perspective, sometimes

quite literally, especially for craftsmen, in order to see things

clearly. Spiritually this is important I believe, so you gain a better

sense of empathy and understanding.”

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Prodigal Son


“I’ve been trying to paint this story from the Bible for years,

looking for the right space but never captured it until I thought to

introduce the horse which acts in place of the family, drooling on

the poor man beneath. As if nature is saying, It’s part of the process

of achievement to fail, to be drooled on. It’s funny to me that the

man is actually playing with the spit, seemingly unaffected by it.”

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Death of the Fairytale


“In a way this piece is similar to ‘Contemporary Painting’. The

lack of depth, story and the narrative in contemporary culture, in

particular painting, starves the witch and splinters the broom. The

detail and authenticity that subjects need in order to exist within

a story requires a deep appreciation for each. In essence perhaps

painters have less time for them anymore I suppose.”

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The Witch & The Singing Snakes


“I’ve been toying with this image for a while. Snakes were writhing,

disguised as grass with their tongues in the place of seeds baiting

birds. I started this painting with the snakes exclusively but as is

often the case I realised it needed a figurative element. I stumbled

on the image of this model and knew it was perfect. It was puzzling

for some time trying to understand her relationship to these snakes

but eventually I realised she was sort of hypnotizing them.”

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The Mermaid


“Back in the early 2000’s I lived in the state of Oregon. It’s a

wonderfully rugged land… I wanted to set up a painting space

with that particular coastline in mind. I was trying to feel my way

for a subject when the figure just sort of appeared. I love how this

woman wants to be free from the bindings of the world, to escape

into the sea, to become a mermaid.”

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The Black Unicorn


“Many paintings in this exhibition show my connections to the

mythic in art. A connection I have with a sense of escape from

the physical presented to us in thie day to day of our existence. I

want to travel to another place sometimes. A place that knows only

that which creates it. This painting is about beauty. Beauty is best

shown when the malnourished are given its strength.”

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Miles Cleveland Goodwin was born in Mississippi and lives and works in Georgia, in the

Appalachian Mountains, USA. He graduated from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in

Oregon in 2007 with a BFA in painting and printmaking. His work has been widely exhibited

in the US including at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the Grace Museum and the Amarillo

Museum of Art among and can be found in collections worldwide including the Ogden

Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. ‘In the Belly of the Beast (Searching for a Heart)’

is his first solo exhibition at Anima Mundi.

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Belly of the Beast


“When my uncle died he left me with many of his old books. I knew

he wanted me to read them but also knew I probably wouldn’t.

So, to respect his desire I used these books physically on canvas

which I attached with Bondo, a very durable sealer. I then kept this

canvas for years not knowing how to use the particular image. I

would meditate on it many times until one day in December of 2023

I flipped it over and saw a perfect place for my self portrait. The

pose spoke to me of a man in hiding. I would think on that a bit

and realise that I was hiding, hiding from the world around me. A

world that does not seem to value art and individual expression.

A capitalistic world that cares more for conformity and material

wealth, not to mention its own spiritual wealth that it uses as a root

to this conformity, which may be the worst part of all. This is the

beast, and as I reside in it I have found that it also has a heart.”

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Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with ’In The Belly of the Beast (Searching for a Heart)’ by Miles Cleveland Goodwin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or

by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers

Anima Mundi . Street-an-Pol . St. Ives . Cornwall . +44 (0)1736 793121 . mail@animamundigallery.com . www.animamundigallery.com

www.animamundigallery.com

Miles Cleveland Goodwin 'In The Belly of the Beast (Searching for a Heart)'

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