She taught art for most of her long career, first in classes held in community centers and later in Baltimore's College of Notre Dame.

In the late 1940s Goldstein joined the Art Group of the Baltimore Branch, National League of American Pen Women.

[7] At the end of that year she organized a show designed to sell paintings based on size rather than artistic value and priced low enough to be purchased as holiday gifts.

[7] She later said her transition from realist portraits to nature-derived abstractions was sudden and complete, but a fellow artist and art instructor, James G.A.

The award-winning painting, "Big City," was also the favorite of the show's visitors whose votes put it at the top of the best-liked list.

[11] A few months later, she received a best-in-show award for an oil painting in the art exhibition that accompanied the biennial conference of the National League of American Pen Women.

Her work appeared in one gallery while two other Baltimore artists, Shelby Shackelford and William Waller, were given separate solo shows.

[14] a critic for the New York Times gave the show a positive review, saying "Her most promising work is in a lyrical vein; softly rendered drifts of color, freely moving over a luminous base.

"[15] In May 1959, when her work appeared in an invitational exhibition at Morgan State University, a critic for the Baltimore Sun said "Gladys Goldstein seldom fails to furnish a fresh insight on whatever matter she undertakes; her "Blossom," the sparest imaginable oil-on-paper, seems composed of light.

"[16] In December of the same year her paintings appeared in a solo exhibition in the lobby of a motion picture theater called the Playhouse.

[18] Regarding her work in the latter, a Sun said, "As always, her sources are nature in its multiple aspects: the sea, tempestuous or calm, a summer landscape, a stony bank at the first moment of spring.

The author said, "has set herself the sticky problem of capturing space and light by almost completely abstract means.... Mrs. Goldstein is thus working with layers of light—near and far and median—something as evanescent as smoke and more capricious."

[21] During the 1960s and 1970s Goldstein's work continued to appear frequently in group or solo exhibitions held in non-commercial settings such as colleges, community centers, religious organizations, benefit auctions, and municipal spaces.

"[24] Oil paintings and gouaches had predominated in Goldstein's output until the late 1970s when she began to produce collages and other mixed-media work.

They were "two-dimensional, non-illusionistic and non-representational," but they nonetheless suggested "land and landscape," "calligraphy and hieroglyph," and occasionally "stained glass window.

[1] After her death, a curator said that during her career she had "focused on creating and teaching art and was not as interested in the financial gain through the sale of her pieces.

Later, she made many paintings in mixed media, collage forms and sometimes used staining and dripping techniques and incorporated metallics in her work.

A critic said she maintained "extraordinary control" over her collages, weaving items "into the fabric of the painting so that it is the image rather than the materials which take precedence.

"[24] Another said, "Her collages are small, shimmering works featuring painstakingly placed fragments of foil, newspaper clippings and printed papers.

Of one of these paintings, "Signals," shown at left, a critic wrote, "the colors—reds, greens, blues, pinks—are beautiful and they glow almost as if they were stained glass.

In 1991 a critic said she made "subtle use of color and a reserved but sensuous touch to create graceful, somewhat veiled, almost seductive effects.

Employing a beeswax surface rather than a metal plate or lithographic stone, this printing process allowed the artist to add a three-dimensional texture to her work.

The program offered instruction in practical subjects such as typing and dressmaking at no cost to Baltimore residents and was directed by her husband, Edward H. Goldstein.

[35] In 1982, at the age of 62, she left her teaching jobs at the Jewish Community Center and Notre Dame, but continued to give private instruction.

[44] The couple had a son, William N. Goldstein (1943-2006), a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.[45] Goldstein died from complications after surgery at Seasons Hospice in Randallstown, Maryland on March 13, 2010, and was interred in Oheb Shalom Memorial Park, Reisterstown, Maryland.