During the Great Depression there was little work for his father, but Jeremiah was able to attend Lafayette High School, studying art with Elizabeth Weiffenbach and Ethel Davis, with the intention of becoming a set designer for Hollywood or Broadway.

At the same time, another painter, William Bankier Henderson, aide-de-camp to Sir Archibald Wavell, the Viceroy of India, introduced him to a stratum of people who allowed him to paint interpretations of rooms in their residences.

After an offer to decorate the set of a Hollywood jungle film, he was frustrated, realizing that his talents were not being fully utilized and returned to New York City.

In Manhattan, he did whatever he could to earn a living as an illustrator and designer, creating window displays for Sachs Quality Stores and McCrory's, keeping an entrepreneurial eye out for opportunities.

From 1952, for over thirty years, he worked for Lord & Taylor department stores under the Art Direction of Harry Rodman, first designing windows, painting murals and eventually illustrating advertisements and catalogues.

Many commissioned him paint portraits of their residences, notably, stage, screen and TV producer Daniel Melnick, actresses Greta Garbo and Mary Martin, costume designers Edith Head, Gilbert Adrian and Tony Duquette.

In 1957 Jeremiah purchased a carriage house on Long Island, NY, at 14 Meadows Way, East Hampton, built by architect Joseph Greenleaf Thorp for the J. Harper Poor family, circa 1917.

Constructed around a courtyard, where Goodman installed an in-ground swimming pool; banks of French doors and windows overlook gardens planned by Alden Hopkins, a landscape architect for Colonial Williamsburg.

Playwright Edward Albee, sculptor Louise Nevelson, actresses Mary Martin and Hermione Gingold were visitors, as well as designer friends Marjorie Shushan, Mark Epstein, Geoffrey Ross, John Dranfield and Harry Heissmann.

---one of the greatest masters of interior illustration of our time.” – Scott M. Ageloff, IDEC, ASID, AIA (from the catalogue, Inspired Impressions: Interior Paintings by Jeremiah Goodman NYSID 2010) “He conjures up space by combining a deceptively casual perspective (his choice of viewpoint is impeccable, his drawing always accurate) with plays of light and shadow that delineate form while creating atmosphere."

– Christopher Finch, Architectural Digest, February, 2002 "Three-dimensional rendering allows architects and interior designers to advise their clients with a visual of how a room would look before construction and decoration begins.

Renderers require training in design, perspective, art, familiarity with building materials and textiles, knowledge of light and shadow, combined with imagination in order to prescribe the yet-to-be-created interior a personality.

Various techniques and media have been utilized over the centuries by renderers: pen and ink, pencil, chalk, water-colour and guache paints and most recently, computer assisted drawing (CAD).