Passing Through (Nerves Series) 1994

Betty Goodwin's "Passing Through (Nerves Series)" is a work of graphite, colored pencil, and ink that, to me, feels like a distillation of raw feeling. Look at the way the forest is rendered—a dense, scratchy thicket of lines made with graphite and ink, that seem to vibrate with a kind of nervous energy. The branches, almost like tangled nerves, create this claustrophobic space, against which the figure, rendered in soft, muted tones, appears almost translucent. The materiality here is so crucial. The layering of graphite and ink gives a real depth, a sense of something both present and receding. That tension between presence and absence, between the figure and the forest, it's like Goodwin is asking us to consider the ways we move through the world, the marks we leave, and the traces we carry with us. It reminds me a little of Eva Hesse's work, in the way that it embraces vulnerability. This isn't about perfection; it's about process, about the messy, complicated reality of being.