​When Fran Mann Goodman was a little girl she would finish a floral paint-by-number, and add strips of paper mache to the piece, saying it wasn’t finished until it had dimension to  “make the flowers come alive.” 

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Goodman continued to enliven her paintings with dimension, using heavy wall paste at Chouinard Art Institute (CAL ARTS) in California. Trained in the style of representational art in the ‘60s, Goodman was invited to show several of her pieces at the Iron Butterfly Gallery in southern New Jersey along with paintings exhibited in galleries and furniture showrooms in Los Angeles, California. After college, Goodman shifted her interest from painting canvases to women’s faces. 

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At twenty-one, she was the resident makeup artist with Betty Milne Modeling Agency in Toronto, a subsidiary of Wilhelmina Models. As the lead make up artist, she was called upon to get model's camera-ready for international magazine shoots and billboards. Working in the industry, she learned that many women, top models included, had facial inferiority complexes. This led to a 30-year career to inspire all women to appreciate their given beauty. Goodman devised workshops and support groups in the United States and Canada. She shared her personal story with women to promote her beauty philosophy of facial acceptance. This message spread on national talk shows, radio, women’s magazines and other publications including The New York Times. ​During those years, she did not paint. Instead, she wrote a memoir and two screenplays centered around her personal story to continue her mission to empower women to accept and value themselves. 

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In 2012, in the middle of inciting a Hollywood agent's interest in her second screenplay, Goodman contracted Lyme disease, which weakened her hands and affected her ability to write. Fighting a severe depression, Goodman discovered she could hold a palette knife. This led to a master class at the Art Students League with renowned abstract expressionist Larry Poon. There she fused her canvases and built dimension with various mediums -- pastes, sand, glosses, paper towels, and acrylic skins. Shortly after, her work was shown in galleries in New York City. Goodman also was granted the opportunity to teach abstract expressionism at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey.

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A resident of southern Florida since 2015, she is the former Educational Fund Chair for the Delray Art League, Co-Chair of the Art Program for the Boca Raton Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, and Scholarship Coordinator of the National Association of Women Artists. Goodman runs workshops on her techniques and teaches art in Florida and the surrounding area. A former teacher at Old School Square’s Creative Art School, she continues to teach online classes in abstract expressionism for beginner to advanced students.

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An invited speaker for organizations across the east coast, Goodman will be presenting a workshop on acrylic skins at the State Conference for the Florida chapter of the National League of American Pen Women in October 2023. 

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Goodman’s work is in private collections internationally.

 

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