Petaluma portrait artist helps others heal

Petaluma-based portrait artist Amy Goldberg started drawing people at a very young age.

“I guess I was born with it,” she tells us. “I’ve always loved to draw, and I think I was about five when I started creating portraits. I remember being overwhelmed with emotion and encouraged whenever people made comments about how pleased they were, and how realistic I made the drawing. So I kept at it.”

Constantly refining her techniques, Goldberg went to U.C. Irvine to study Fine Arts, but as a junior, she transferred to the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York City.

“It was a great time — a bit of culture shock for an L.A. ‘Valley Girl,’” Goldberg chuckles, adding, “Just Imagine the Saturday Night Live Californians characters discussing the best freeway off-ramps to find a specific art studio or coffee house, and you get the idea. What I reveled in was the chance to immerse myself in creativity. I enjoy music too and play the drums. Perhaps this is why I see rhythms in the endlessness of faces. I capture their shape first and then do the facial expression.”

Goldberg moved back west a decade ago.

“I spent a number of years at Lake Tahoe,” she pauses to reflect. “Talk about contrasts to the big city! Tahoe is a beautiful, nature-filled area tied into the seasonal shifts of tourists coming and going, while New York is, well, New York. I often took Kai, my 120-pound, mixed breed dog on walks, and people would come up and ask what kind of dog he was. I love a good laugh, so I made things up, telling them things like he’s a Tibetan War Hound.”

It was Kai, Goldberg points out, that inspired her to begin doing portraits of animals.

“I drew Kai and then began doing portraits of other people’s dogs,” says Goldberg, who until COVID was busy as a commercial artist, illustrator and concert poster designer (Livemusicart.com). Though she had moved away from portraiture, with so much extra time on here hands lately, she’s recommitted herself to doing portrait, of people and of pets, something she’s always enjoyed. “Since I draw from photographs, I occasionally got a request to do a drawing of a pet that had passed on,” she explains. “My portraits are very realistic, and I quickly learned that some people get very emotional when they first see the finished portrait. Over and over, people said they were amazed that I could make their beloved companion ‘look so alive.’”

She enjoys doing many different types of portrait subjects — ranging from dogs, all breeds, to babies to senior citizens. Early on, Goldberg was moved by the stories she heard in the news of people dying of COVID-19, and saw a unique personal way she could give back, using her art.

“I sought out people who had loved ones who had passed from Coronavirus and offered portraits to them,” she says. “They have become friends now and it was very meaningful.”

Among those portraits she’s done of COViD victims was Jason Hargrove, the Detroit bus-driver who recorded a viral video after a shift in which a rider was coughing and refusing to cover their mouth. Less than two weeks later, Hargrove had died of the disease.

“I am hoping to do more of these,” Goldberg says. “It seems to bring the families some modicum of happiness.”

Painting one of these portraits takes Goldberg several days or even several weeks, and the price depends on the finished size, the number of subjects, and the medium (graphite pencil, b&w pastel, or color pastel). Examples can be seen on Goldberg’s website: amygarts.com.

As a single mother, Goldberg understood that her son needed a chance to attend better schools and have a greater circle of friends, so she moved south to the city of Sonoma, enrolling him in a small school for kindergarten and first grade.

“When he was seven and heading into 2nd grade, we moved to Petaluma with the chance to start over in a whole new way,” she continues. “The choice of schools was much better, the people friendlier, and even with the quarantine restrictions, the opportunity for me to be a full-time artist is much stronger.”

As much fun as it can be, Goldberg says that painting portraits con often be nerve-wracking.

“95% of the time, feedback is very positive, but I still get nervous about what clients will feel about the finished piece,” she allows. “It’s not like a photograph, but is, instead, a creative piece of handmade art.”

(Contact Gil Mansergh at 45gilmansergh@gmail.com)

— David Templeton contributed some additional material to this piece.