At a time when the world is facing unprecedented unrest, few artists address grief and mourning as powerfully as Betty Goodwin (1923–2008). One of the giants of contemporary art in Canada, she emerged as a singular talent in the 1970s. Born in Montreal, where she remained a dominant artistic presence over a six-decades-long career, Goodwin was nurtured in the post-war years by a group of Jewish painters committed to social justice. By the 1960s, she was searching for a more personal artistic voice. Always attuned to the ills of the world, she went on to create a prolific body of work encompassing painting, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking.

In  Betty Goodwin: Life & Work, author Jessica Bradley tells the story of this visionary creator’s remarkable career, highlighting how, in 1968, Goodwin began putting pieces of clothing through a printing press. Her resulting Vest series—now celebrated as one of the major breakthroughs in contemporary printmaking—resonated with Goodwin’s early loss of her father, a vest maker. Achievements that followed included critical acclaim for her contribution to the art of drawing, participation in the Venice Biennale in 1995, and receipt of a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and the Order of Canada in 2003.

Despite being the subject of numerous solo exhibitions during and after her lifetime, Betty Goodwin: Life & Work is the first comprehensive English-language overview of the artist’s career since her death.