Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco blogs about the exhibition Catherine Goodman: Portraits from Life at The National Portrait Gallery, London, on view through November 23, 2014.

Del Turco writes: "The portraits are almost all close ups, the head bigger than life size, the brushwork layered and energetic, respecting both the form and the surface of the canvas; the palette is rich with realistic skin tones punctuated by marks in saturated colour… Freud's sitters look mostly gloomy and obliging, Auerbach's have their outside appearance obliterated as he explores their humanness. Goodman's sitters on the other hand seem to have a much more active if not democratic role in the work of art, which looks like a cooperation between two human beings rather than a long ordeal one is submitting the other to. The process result in a series of works that speak about painting, life, beauty, memories, engagement."