Elaine M. Good, Figurative Painter
Elaine Marinoff Good, an artist whose floor-to-ceiling figurative oils were often influenced by world events and a writer who recently finished a memoir, died of complications of ovarian cancer at her home in New York City on May 20. Ms. Good, who had a house in Bridgehampton, was 83.
Known for translating major news stories into works of art, she was a firsthand witness to the World Trade Center attack and created a 9/11 series, using thick impasto acrylic paint that she mixed with marble dust. She also painted an environmental series inspired by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. On her website, she described the paintings as reflections of the “humanity that escaped, the dead souls buried in the debris, and the peachy fog, which engulfed us.”
During her career, Ms. Good had more than 20 one-person shows and was in more than 100 group exhibitions at museums and galleries, including the Eva Cohon Gallery in Chicago and the Galerie Woeller-Paquet and das Bilderhaus in Frankfurt, Germany. She served on the board of directors of the Fine Arts Federation of New York City from 2002 to 2012 and had been an adjunct art professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
She was born on Sept. 24, 1934, in Los Angeles to George Marinoff and the former Lena Brown, who had fled Ukraine. She spent her childhood in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C.L.A., where she majored in fine arts. She also studied at the Sorbonne.
It was at college that she met the man who would become her husband, Dr. Robert Glen Good. She supported him and their three children by working as a fashion illustrator for magazines and as an interior designer while he was in medical school. She also pursued her passion for painting, and had work exhibited at the Laguna Museum of Art, the Downey Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
In 1988, after a divorce, she moved to New York City, where she converted a factory in TriBeCa into living space filled with paintings and books. She studied painting at the School of Visual Arts and creative writing at the New School for Social Research. She wrote both fiction and nonfiction, and had spent years working on her memoir as a member of the Ashawagh Hall Writers Workshop and in classes at Stony Brook University’s Southampton campus.
She is survived by three children: Cynthia Good of Atlanta, Glendon Good of Sedona, Ariz., and Bradley Good of Shanghai. Her sisters, Susan Shrag of Berkeley, Calif., and Deborah Marinoff of San Francisco, survive, as do four grandchildren.
A memorial service, with a grandson officiating, was held on Tuesday at Edgewood Cemetery in Bridgehampton, and a reception followed in a nearby residence. Ms. Good had a beloved cat, Krissy, and memorial donations have been suggested to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott 11975, or arfhamptons.org.