Mosaic of life

Exeter’s grande dame of mosaic art Elaine M Goodwin reflects on a 50 year career and the work that has made her an icon

- Elaine M Goodwin

Like many artists, Elaine M Goodwin began with mainstream art mediums. In her case, it was studying sculpture and photography at Exeter College of Art in the early 1970s. But her artistic development was forever transformed after a visit to the second-century AD Roman villa of Italica, near Seville and her first sighting of a mosaic.

“I was captivated!” she says. Returning to England and unable to find anyone at art college who taught mosaic, she set about discovering the medium and spent ten years travelling around the Mediterranean in the company of academics and friends studying the techniques, materials and history of mosaics, aiming to unlock the secrets of this ancient art.

She then shared this knowledge in a series of five books and an encyclopaedia. Her work is now well known, from the Eden Project in Cornwall, where she created a triptych titled Liquid Gold inspired by the olive tree, to works in private and national collections.

Her most recent exhibition, Journeying To Light at Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM) showed the artistic process of her work spanning 40 years.

Elaine’s initial inspirations came from two major sources: firstly, the mosaics of ancient Greece and Rome and secondly the mosaics of Byzantium. The exhibition showed examples from both sources and concluded by exhibiting works which demonstrate the artist’s acknowledgement of her past influences and their evolvement into her immediately recognizable style.

There are a number of recurring themes and symbols to which Elaine has returned over the years.