For several months I have been reading Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women, a broad and juicy narrative that chronicles five superior women painters—Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell—and their pioneering contribution to American art. With these illustrious muses occupying my psyche, arriving at Kathy Goodell’s exhibition at Private Public Gallery in Hudson is like walking into another chapter in the continuous story of painting, Goodell herself another master whose work is defining an era.
“In the Darkness I See,” on view through November 16, is an exquisite solo show and an all-out celebration of abstract expressionism. The entire room glows with an ambiance of meditative power that vibrates, hums, and explodes as Goodell takes us beyond the beyond. Altogether a chorus of elation, the individual artworks each have an intriguing tale to tell, and it was Saturnia (2025) that seduced me into the scene. With it’s murky purple-hued background and ocean of Miro-esque black marks and red patches throughout, this work is reminiscent of poetry by the beloved Mary Oliver, who often uses words such as ‘wild’ and ‘precious’ in the same breath. Indeed, Goodell’s orchestration of paint inspires a surge of personal references that reverberate through each piece—it is the generosity of her style that allows for this beautifully exclusive experience.
Other works, such as Tituba’s Spell (2024), are daring in their flirtatiousness, and here a pearly bleached backdrop gives space for a jumble of pinkish-toned gestures that whirl about in a frenetic dance of fun. The Night Belongs to Lovers (2025) is another adventure in swimming through Goodell’s lush painterly fields of exploration, its whitish background laced with playful purples, blues, and greens that coalesce in their rapture.
Goodell describes her work as “an imagined garden of the mind,” and One Thousand Years from Now (2025) is a supreme embodiment of this sentiment. With a luminous patch at the top that infuses the entire painting with a spiritual radiance as it cascades outward in this sylvan dream of verdant chaos, this work epitomizes the steadfast nourishing energy of Mother Earth (may she reign for one thousand years and more). Sardinia (2025) is yet another pool of glorious greenish-yellow colors that hint at this gorgeous Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea.
The smaller works in this show bring us in and out of Goodell’s enchanting moods, and Murmur (2025), with its intense cobalt blue, feels like falling rain, while A Perfect Day (2025) is a patchwork of pink, red, and tan tints that sooth the soul. The last painting to tickle my heart was Taam Jah (2025), an effervescent pasture of endless possibilities.
Goodell’s art is a superlative vision of existence, an improvisational realm of energy that sweeps us away. This exhibition is a testimony to her presence as a force in the field, another badass woman to continue the dynamic legacy of painting. She gives us everything, and thus we remember our presence in the nowness of her painterly magnetism. As elegantly stated by Goodell herself: “It’s my way of saying I am here—I exist for now.”
