Of Iranian descent and born in Pakistan, Gohar grew up in Lahore, Karachi, Paris and London. She learned to knit from nuns at her boarding school in the Himalayas. In 1985 she launched her textiles, yarn and knitwear business, Ziggurat, which later became English Weather.

Gohar Goddard image

Today English Weather produces luxury cashmere knitwear and scarves featuring digital prints of Gohar's paintings.

Gohar Goddard is first and foremost a colourist. Her combination of colours and textures bely her background as a textile designer. Like textiles, her paintings are tactile and considered.

Gohar's early influencers were Matisse, Klee and Tapies. In the 1990s, following an art study and industry tour in Cornwall, she became devoted to the work of British artists William Scott, Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton. She resolved to teach herself to paint and explore the same aesthetic themes that occupied her in the knitweae and in her ceramics: The physicality of the medium, the tactile quality of ordinary materials, aesthetics of stillness and calm, and the beauty of careful colour combinations.