“See your trauma as a gift, because you can use it to inspire other people.” — Fran Mann Goodman
Invariably, the stories behind the art are as fascinating as the works displayed at Morristown’s Art Walk.
Take Fran Mann Goodman.
Her abstract expressionist paintings were exhibited Sunday inside the annex of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, one of 16 venues where 60 artists showed off their creations in assorted media. Art Space Studio and Morris Arts organized the event, which marked its third anniversary.
Fran, a member of the Morris County Art Association and the New York Art Students League, teaches art at the Morris Museum between her shows. Which is pretty impressive, considering she only took up painting last year, at age 66.
Lyme disease had torpedoed her writing career. The act of typing on a computer became too painful.
Fran knows a lot about pain, physical and emotional; for her, “keep your chin up” has dark implications.
A rare condition caused her jaw to stop growing when she was about 12. Classmates in Newark were merciless, and her good-looking family–her dad was a model–turned “very snobby” and cold, Fran said. She felt suicidal. Botched cosmetic surgery did not help.
Gradually, though, she turned this misfortune to her advantage. She gave seminars to help women boost their self-esteem. She opened a makeover studio in Upper Montclair. (“Nothing to conceal! Everything to reveal!”) She appeared on the Sally Jessy Raphael show and NPR. She even coached shy people on public speaking, with Toastmasters.
“A lot of women are very beautiful, but don’t see their own beauty. They have a distorted impression of what they look like,” often because of disparaging remarks by others “that can do a lot of damage to them,” Fran said, as her young granddaughters helped visitors to the Art Walk daub paint onto a communal mural in front of Capital One Bank.
Scenes from the third annual Morristown Art Walk. Please click icon below for captions.
Fran’s accomplishments include a memoir and a pair of screenplays. Then, two years ago, at a seminar in upstate New York, she contracted Lyme disease, which left her with severe arthritis. The first sign was yoga; she no longer could get up from the floor without help.
“I was very frustrated and very depressed. I couldn’t write… my thumbs couldn’t even do the space bar,” Fran recounted.
That’s when she re-connected with painting, lifting a paint brush for the first time since her school days at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in the 1960s.
“It was a godsend for me,” Fran said.
Using molding pastes and gels, she fashions intricate textures. Her abstract paintings have been shown in juried shows around the tri-state area, and they hang in private collections in New York and Hollywood.
“I’m not going to let anything stop me. The most important thing is to keep moving, and do the things I want to do in my life,” she said.
It flows from a realization she formed long ago, when life looked bleak.
“My trauma was a gift,” Fran said. “I never would have been able to meet all the people that I did, and help so many people,” without it.
It’s what she’s been saying for decades, to anyone who will listen.
“See your trauma as a gift, because you can use it to inspire other people.”
MORE ABOUT THE MORRISTOWN ART WALK
Video: Fran Mann Goodman’s journey
