Rosabel Goodman Everard

Whistling in the Dark

Before doodling in the dark, I spent a lot of time whistling in the dark, and still do.  When I was 18, my family decided I was to become a lawyer instead of a veterinarian in Africa. Ever since, I never knew quite what to do with myself. 

During my years as a lawyer, I had the good fortune of working for a law professor, Pieter Sanders, who was also a world-renowned collector of modern art and of African art. His house, where he held office, was a true museum. There was a George Rickey in the garden, a Giacometti in the garage, a Pomodoro in the kitchen, a Kapoor in the stairwell, and a Mondrian and a Henry Moore in the living room. Among many, many others. With Pieter, I got to visit a lot of museums and galleries and met a lot of artists. 

Later, between jobs and countries, I worked for a cousin, Hans Max Cramer, who had a gallery of classical art: Rembrandt, Cranach, Ruysdael, Van Goyen, Vermeer. To be surrounded five days a week by all this centuries old beauty is a rare privilege. No surprise it was during that period that I began my art education. 

First, I learned art in a random, hopscotch kind of way, by taking lessons from artists and by just doing it. I have always loved drawing. For my 9th or 10th birthday, my parents gave me a very large metal box of Caran d'Ache colored pencils, with an image of the Matterhorn on the lid. Well over half a century later, the box is broken and gone, but there are still some of its pencils in my tool case. I drew flowers that I picked in the Swiss Alps where I used to spend summers with my parents. In those days, my father still refused to drive through Germany, so we laboriously, over the course of three or so days, wound our way through Belgium, Luxembourg and France to get to Switzerland. Then I discovered India Ink and started to copy the drawings of Anton Pieck in my Grimm fairy tales book. Unlike what their name suggests, fairy tales are rarely about fairies and not meant to lull small children to sleep. They are often cruel and scary, meant to be told in the dark around a roaring fire, and Anton Pieck's drawings brought out that aspect. As young as I was, I loved these drawings, full of decrepitude, bleeding wounds, peeling walls and rotting wood. He deeply inspires me to this day. 

I was born in the Netherlands but lived in many places: Belgium, France, the United States and South Africa. In 2001, I moved to the USA. We settled in Washington, DC. Walking my dog one day, I met an artist, Joan Danziger, who became a friend for life. She never taught me art, but inspired me endlessly, shared her many art friends with me, and later on curated several of my shows and helped me write the words to my invitations, and wrote prefaces to my catalogues. Early on, she encouraged me to enroll at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. 

At the Corcoran, through one of my teachers, Annette Polan, I became involved in Faces of the Fallen, a project of some 1,500 small portraits of soldiers fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan, all 8”x6”, made by well over 200 artists from all over the USA, which found a temporary home at the Women’s Memorial at Arlington Cemetery. Through Joan Danziger I became involved with a fundraising project of the National Symphony Orchestra and painted a violin inspired by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which was auctioned off in the Kennedy Center by Marvin Hamlisch. Another guru is Judy Sutherland who I met as one of my teachers at the Corcoran and who inspires me to this day. 

I joined Studio Gallery in Washington, DC, where I had my first shows, and then joined the Middle Street Gallery in Washington, VA – after 2010, I had developed a parallel existence in the Virginia Piedmont. Every November I participate in the Rappahannock Art Tour Weekend there. Since 2020, I am represented by Andrew Haley of Haley Fine Art in Sperryville, VA. 

In March 2022 I had a solo show in the Arts Club of Washington. My first solo show was there, too, in 2011. 

And finally I could not work peacefully and happily if it were not for the unfailing support of Ron, my amazing husband of forty years, my two canine studio companions, Barrett and Beau, and my most steadfast admirer, my daughter Caitlin.