"My paintings explore the physical life of the painted surface. Using acrylic paint with heavy pastes and other dimensional materials, I build and shape layers that allow texture, color, and light to interact across the canvas.

I am interested in how a painting develops when the structure of the surface is established before color fully emerges. Through carving, layering, and unexpected applications of material, the painting begins to suggest its own direction, creating movement and depth.

Color plays a central role in my work, and I aim for each painting to offer a cinematic experience. Rather than directing the viewer toward a single interpretation, I invite them to wander within the work and respond on their own visceral level."

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Fran Mann Goodman is an award-winning abstract expressionist painter known for her richly textured, dimensional surfaces created with acrylic paint and mixed media. After a thirty-year career in the beauty industry inspiring women to see themselves differently, she returned to the studio where her work now explores color, texture, and sculpted surfaces in paint.

As a child, Goodman was already experimenting with ways to bring paintings to life. She added papier-mâché to the flowers in her paint-by-number kits so the blossoms would rise from the surface and feel more real. That early fascination with dimension stayed with her as she began her formal art education at Chouinard Art Institute, where she first studied fashion design and illustration before being encouraged by her professor, Robert Chuey, to pursue painting. Goodman changed her major to fine art and worked primarily in a representational style. As a student, she was invited to exhibit her work in galleries and furniture showrooms throughout Los Angeles.

After college, a childhood trauma involving her face led Goodman in a different direction. Instead of painting canvases, she began working with women’s faces. At twenty-one she became the lead makeup artist at the Betty Milne Modeling Agency in Toronto, a subsidiary of Wilhelmina Models, preparing top models for international photo shoots and advertising campaigns. Through this work she observed that even aesthetically beautiful women often carried deep insecurities about their appearance. What began as professional makeup work evolved into a thirty-year career devoted to helping women appreciate their given beauty. Goodman developed workshops and self-development groups across the United States and Canada and appeared in national media, including television talk shows, women’s magazines, radio, and The New York Times. During those years she set painting aside and instead wrote a memoir and two screenplays based on her personal story and mission.

In 2012, while pursuing interest from a Hollywood agent in her second screenplay, Goodman contracted Lyme disease, which weakened her hands and made writing difficult. During a period of depression she returned to painting and discovered that while she could not comfortably hold a brush, she could work with a palette knife. This led her naturally to the physical, layered language of abstract expressionism. She continued her studies through master classes with renowned abstract painter Larry Poons at the Art Students League of New York. Goodman’s work was subsequently exhibited in New York galleries, and she began teaching abstract painting at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey.

Since moving to South Florida in 2015, Goodman has continued to develop her distinctive approach to textured abstraction. Her paintings combine acrylic paint with heavy pastes, sands, paper towels, acrylic skins, and other dimensional materials to create richly layered surfaces. Her work has appeared in more than fifty exhibitions in the United States and Canada and is held in private collections internationally.

Teaching has become an important part of Goodman’s practice. She developed Not Your Ordinary Painting Class, a program designed for both beginners and experienced painters that integrates art history, composition, and the expressive possibilities of abstract painting. A sought-after workshop leader and speaker, she has taught both online and in person at venues throughout Palm Beach County. Goodman has published instructional material on the techniques she teaches, and both her artwork and her story have been featured in publications including Delray Magazine and Boca Magazine.

A resident of South Florida, Goodman is the former Educational Fund Chair of the Delray Art League and a Signature Member of the Boca Art Guild. She has also served as Co-Chair of the Art Program for the Boca Raton Branch of the National League of American Pen Women and currently serves as Scholarship Chair for the Florida Chapter of the National Association of Women Artists.

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