Joseph Goody Watercolours

The freshness and luminosity you get with watercolour is quite unlike any other medium. Working with watercolour makes you very aware of boundaries.....and where ideas have changed but still remain visible. I think there’s a real beauty in that.’

Working in watercolour has played a key part in abstract painter Joseph Goody's practice during the past five years. Featuring his characteristic geometric forms and layering, these paintings not only serve as a vehicle for experimentation; they also form an independent body of work with a distinctive identity of its own.  

Joseph’s studio at the Moritz-Heyman Artistic Residency, Pignano, Italy, 2017.

The Moritz-Heyman Artistic Residency, Pignano, Italy, 2017

Joseph recalls working on his first watercolours during a Royal Drawing School artistic residency in rural Tuscany, Italy in 2017. He describes this experience as having ‘taken me somewhere completely different. It was the middle of summer, and there was this amazing light that really emphasised the potential of the medium’.

Works on paper in progress in Joseph’s studio at the Moritz-Heyman Artistic Residency, Pignano, Italy, 2017.

These early, large-scale ‘Pignano’ paintings, created in tones evocative of Mediterranean warmth, see the artist working in a range of styles in a short period of time. These include pure watercolour works with sweeping brush-strokes through to heavier, mixed-media pieces with areas of dense detail.

Pignano Study 4, 2018.

Alongside the larger works in this collection, Joseph has produced paintings on paper on a smaller, more intimate scale. This decision– in the artist’s words – ‘means that forms get pared down’. Joseph has also begun to experiment with different kinds of paper; each has their own surface texture which reacts with paint pigments differently.

Watercolour Study 27, 2018.

A favourite, heavier paper of the artist’s, made at Two Rivers Mill in Wimborne Minster, England, is described by Joseph as ‘really tough; you can almost wipe the paint away and see the drawing lines, to bring you back to the initial idea’. In these works, ghostly forms can be seen beneath the surface, like traces of previous ideas, or memories of what has gone before.

Watercolour Study 30, 2020

In contrast, Joseph’s ‘large paper studies’ of 2020 offer a change of direction. Painted on velvety, smooth paper, the viewer sees the artist being ‘specific and decisive – as clear as possible’. In these deceptively simple compositions, the silhouettes of jutting rock formations and chasms are suggested. Here, Joseph has used mustards, lilacs, peaches and turquoises; an impactful palette which heightens the boundaries between abstract forms. This symbolises the beginning of a period of development where, in Joseph’s recent collages and woodcut prints, a palette of primary reds, yellows, blues and greens has begun to dominate.  

LPS6, 2020.

For Joseph, these works on paper continue to have ‘a massive impact upon my paintings. ‘They help me learn something. I’m constantly feeding back things that have happened on paper into my oil and acrylic works…..that’s what helps me keep things moving forwards.’

Joseph Goody, March 2023.

Joseph Goody in his south east London studio, February 2023.