“Goodwin’s paintings cut through the noise of our contemporary sensibilities, laying bare the human condition through his own brutally honest depiction of his little corner of the world. As a contemporary painter and sculptor based firmly in the rural South, Miles Cleveland Goodwin draws inspiration from his own dark, rich and fertile imagination and from the landscape — including the flora, fauna and folks who reside there. His complicated and intuitive narrative paintings are executed in a rough expressionism, often exploring concepts of mortality, struggle, place and cultural identity.” — A quote from the essay, “A Southern Howl: Thoughts on Miles Cleveland Goodwin” by Bradley Sumrall, Curator of the Collection at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans

In this self portrait, The Cross I Bear, Goodwin presents his paint-blotched easel as metaphorical cross. The image is emblematic of the inner battle between fidelity to the spiritual calling felt by the artist with the necessary evil of earning a living for survival. The artist acknowledges the human desire to experience success, while simultaneously lamenting that it necessitates courting the art world and some of its clinical machinery.

Miles Cleveland Goodwin was born in the Biloxi, Mississippi in 1980. He spent his youth in the American South. He served a tour of duty in the US Navy before earning a BFA from Pacific Northwest College in Portland, Oregon in 2007.