Ralph Goings

(American, 1928–2016)

Ralph Goings is an American painter and prominent member of the Photorealist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. His watercolors and oil paintings depict the interiors of quintessentially American subjects such as diners, laundromats, gas stations, and pickup trucks with a carefully observed level of detail and smooth handling of paint. Goings, like fellow Photorealist Robert Bechtle, was initially criticized by his teachers and peers for working from photographs, facing skepticism for what they deemed as mindless copying. He persisted in defending his practice, once explaining that his “paintings are about light, about the way things look in their environment and especially about how things look painted. Form, color, and space are at the whim of reality, their discovery and organization is the assignment of the realist painter.” Born on May 9, 1928 in Corning, CA, he went to study at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and received his MFA from Sacramento State College in 1965. Today, Goings’ work is found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, among others. The artist lives and works between Charlotteville, NY and Santa Cruz, CA.