Sunny Goode, Spreading Love

My very first artist profile is of Sunny Goode, painter and entrepreneur extraordinaire. I met Sunny years ago through baseball and her middle child, Whit. So when I was thinking of how to describe Sunny to you, the first thought that popped into my head is that she is very aptly named. She is positive, bright, inquisitive, and kind of a force of nature! She knows almost everyone in Richmond and assumes you do too (I don’t).  The second thing that popped to mind was the song from The Sound of Music about the problem of describing Maria. Mere words to not do her justice. She is kind, blunt, a bit of a mystic, a dreamer, and yet a total brass tacks realist. She is not afraid to laugh at herself or with others, and she laughs frequently.  Sunny has a twinkle in her eye that makes you feel like she and the world have a private joke and that she definitely finds the world humorous. She is an enigma. She is crazily artistic and yet has a very acute business sense. And she loves with her whole being, so much so that it has transformed her recent artistic works and taken her in a totally different direction than her well known landscapes. Her “love evolutions” are simple, beautiful, and calm but also complicated.

Sunny was born in Atlanta, GA and lived there until her parents divorce precipitated a move to Barrington, IL where she finished high school. She went to college at Hollins and majored in Art History. After school she was a successful salesperson for Britches of Georgetown to pay the bills while she got started doing decorative painting.  In 1993, she married Read and moved to Richmond. In 1998, Sunny started painting canvases. Not satisfied to just create gorgeous art work, she also wanted to fully understand color and light. So she enrolled and became certified in The Psychological and Physiological Effects of Color (in California) and started doing color consultation too. Her knowledge of color and how it affects people is one of the reasons that her work is so beautiful and moving.

In typical Sunny style, along the way she discovered one thing that totally eclipsed her love of art, and that was the love of her three children, Presley, Whit, and Beck. She states simply, “They will always be my priority. Art will never take precedence over my kids.”  And that’s just a fact. As immersed in the art world as she is, her kids keep her grounded and always take center stage when they need her.  When she talks about them, she glows…and gives multiple low-throated giggles. She loves them whole heartedly, enjoys them and the people they are becoming.

Lest you think that everything has come easily to her, Sunny’s life hit a challenging patch when she became an empty nester, suffered through a divorce and a subsequent move, and got a breast cancer diagnosis. The struggles in her life spilled into her artistic world and she developed a creative block that she had a tough time overcoming. Yet out of a paralyzing creative block, an even stronger positive personality emerged.  She has truly become an aesthetic activist using her art to create social change.  Sunny started working with the The One Love Foundation to help get their message out into the world. The One Love Foundation is an organization dedicated to educating young people about healthy and unhealthy relationships, empowering them to identify and avoid abuse and learning to love better.  This idea is central to who Sunny is. So much so that she has a section on her website dedicated to giving back to The One Love Foundation. One of Sunny’s dreams is to get the One Love curriculum into all elementary, middle, and high schools in Richmond.  She focuses on the foundation of healthy relationships for all and believes with a strong foundation there will be less addiction, abuse and neglect.  She also gives her time, talent and activism to The Breast Cancer Alliance.  Sunny has several exciting projects in the works that I will joyfully tell you about when the time is right. With her positive message, love, and activism, I believe Sunny will leave the world a much better place than she found it.

Give yourself a treat today and go to her website to see all that she has going on. https://www.sunnygoode.com/

https://lovevolve.love/