Nicholas Goodhue

Nicholas is a Waltham-based multidisciplinary artist from Bridgewater, Massachusetts. His practice draws from personal experiences and explores boyhood in relation to American suburbia with repeating themes of privilege, toxic masculinity, and substance abuse. He received his BFA in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2016 and his MFA in Studio Art at Maine College of Art in 2022. Nicholas has shown work in group exhibitions in galleries around the Boston area, including Fountain Street Gallery in Boston’s SOWA Art District. He will be participating in School of Visual Arts’ Summer Artist Residencies Program in New York City during the summer of 2022. Nicholas is both a practicing artist and art educator, where he has been teaching in Waltham’s McDevitt Middle School for the past 5 years. His other interests include being an uncle, Boston sports, and staying sober.

Night Swimming (The Best Thing I Ever Did) 2021 20” x 25” x 16” Acrylic paint on gasoline container, football facemask, toy cars

Fragments of Privilege and Peril in the Pursuit of a Masculinity: What does it look like to choose danger in a place that ensures safety and security? I argue that the cultural construction of American suburbia and its mythic image and ideologies have bred an unsustainable blueprint for those who pursue dominant notions of masculinity. Grounded in the masculine belief of hyperindividualism and paired with a desperation for social belonging, youth who abandon the development of a unique, individualized self in commitment to the on-going process of earning masculine status create a complex culture of their own - one in which I was once immersed in. In my work I bring form to this precarious pursuit and unstable social identity. Embedded symbols and cultural references are woven into found objects to create works that are both familiar and obscure, challenging legibility to create an indiscernible read that combats a linear narrative. Found objects become surrogates for childhood friends and recollections of lived experiences while painted suburban imagery locates the work and suggests a privileged worldview. Although the culture expressed through my work is saturated with privilege, the reality of embodying such privilege and pursuing the imagined position of power is nuanced. My work does not explicitly call for change or offer a solution, it implores viewers to consider identity formation tethered to dominant masculinity in terms of precarity, peril, and degradation.

Lunch Block Lockdown (Nuh Uh) 2021, 62” x 35” x 41” Acrylic and spray paint on insulation foam board, car floormats, lighters, metal school desk legs plywood

TARE 5.0 2021, 34” x 22” Athletic garments, pillow case

Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Dap Me Up) 2022, 13” x 70” x 15” Acrylic paint on air-dry clay, vinyl house siding, Little Tikes plastic slide